Contar un monte de oro. 10 years of comics at the Academy

17/03/2023. [ROM] Italy
metalocus, ANTONIO CORREDERA

On the occasion of "Comic and Comics Day" today, March 17 (declared last year by the Council of Ministers), we travelled to the Academia Española en Roma which, within the framework of its 150th anniversary, inaugurated the exhibition "Counting a mountain of gold."

It is an exhibition that covers 10 years of comics at the Academy through the works of 17 artists who have passed through there thanks to the comic and illustration scholarship and can be visited until June 4, 2023.

Álvaro Ortiz. Contar un monte de oro. 10 years of comics at the Academy.

Álvaro Ortiz. Contar un monte de oro. 10 years of comics at the Academy.

Carla Berrocal. Contar un monte de oro 10 years of comics at the Academy.

Martín López lam. Contar un monte de oro 10 years of comics at the Academy.

Miguel Taboada. Contar un monte de oro 10 years of comics at the Academy.

With the 150 years of the life of the Academy of Spain in Rome, the first 10 years of the entry of comics among the disciplines covered by the scholarship are also celebrated. A visual medium with a unique ability to reach people and, at the same time, a field that is difficult to define in the case of a spatiotemporal device that, in only two dimensions, records time, space, stories, and desires.

In this decade, 6 Spanish and Latin American authors entered with this scholarship - TYTO ALBA (Badalona, 1975), CARLA BERROCAL (Madrid, 1983), ANA BUSTELO (Palencia, 1982), JOAN CASARAMONA (Barcelona, 1988), MIGUEL CUBA (Lugo, 1982), YEYEI GÓMEZ (Madrid, 1993), JULIA HUETE (Ourense, 1990), MARTÍN LÓPEZ LAM (Lima, 1981), LOS BRAVÚ. DEA GÓMEZ (Salamanca, 1989) + DIEGO OMIL (Pontevedra, 1988), ÁLVARO ORTIZ (Zaragoza, 1983), FEDERICO PAZOS (Buenos Aires, 1980), BRAIS RODRÍGUEZ (Boiro, 1980), JAVIER SAEZ CASTÁN (Huesca, 1964), ANTONIA SANTOLAYA (Ribafrecha, 1966), JOAQUÍN SECALL (Salamanca, 1973) and ADOLFO SERRA (Teruel, 1980) - and intertwined their artistic career with their time in Rome and the Academy. Living together with other disciplines, in a unique context, they tested their limits of expression through a personal project.

These 17 looks return to the Academy to remember, tell, and reflect on what it means to live and create on this Roman hill: an old convent on a golden hill that becomes a centre for artistic residences that surrounds a Temple. The Spanish Academy in Rome is also a generator of stories: every year, a new group inhabits it, creating while living and loving its spaces.

The exhibition occupies three living spaces of the Academy: a cloister, a lounge and a terrace. In the cloister, a key place, a book spread out on drawing boards reflects this return to the Academy with a look at the present. The hall, an exhibition cabinet, is a place of memory of the works that were born during his Roman stay. The terrace, which overlooks the city, is a celebration of the constantly watched Rome, from the Gianicolo to places like Forte Prenestino (with its CRACK! comic festival); it becomes an invitation to future stories that will not stop coming.