The name of the exhibition is a reference to a number of articles that Luis Seoane wrote for the magazine Galicia Emigrante. The Fundación Luis Seoane is showing here, for the first time together, both of his bestiaries: Diez xilografías originales, from 1965, and Bestiario, from 1976. The show also exhibits proofs from his 1975 book Insectario, galley proofs of his 1978 book Imágenes de Galicia, original prints from 1977’s Imaxens Celtas, and a selection of some of the books from his private library that he used as a source. They are nearly 72 pieces that allow the audience to learn more about the artist’s creative process through his printing proofs. His huge sense of curiosity is evident in the sources that he used to submerge himself in a subject and a medium that succeeded in anchoring Galicia to a specific period –the Middle Ages– and a primitive nature, which is constantly evoked as an essential reference point in the development of an environment, an architecture, a population and, above all, a culture of its own.
The exhibition includes a compilation of books from Luis Seoane’s private library, on loan from the Royal Galician Academy. Those works are an example of erudition and have a significant value. Some of them are Max Ernst’s Histoire naturelle, first published in Paris in 1955, André Masson’s Massacres et autres dessins (1971), Pablo Picasso’s exploration of the myth of the minotaur which was published in Germany in 1963, an essay on Goya by André Malraux, a catalogue illustrating Victor Hugo’s La pieuvre also by Malraux, and true gems like the works that art historian Jurgis Baltrusaitis published on the Middle Ages and on Gothic art.