Novel
Jusep Torres Campalans
Max Aub · 1958
Synopsis
The biography of a Catalan painter, Jusep Torres Campalans, born in 1886 in Mollerussa, an anarchist, friend of Picasso in Paris and counted among the founders of Cubism, who is said to have withdrawn to Mexico, to Chiapas, to live as a recluse. The book brings together conversations with him in Chiapas, his “green notebook” of thoughts from the years 1906 to 1914 and the catalogue of his works, signed by a certain H. R. Town, for an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1942 that never took place, with reproductions and photographs. The painter never existed.
Context
The book was published in Mexico City in 1958, and the author had canvases attributed to his painter exhibited in Mexico City the same year, then at the Bodley Gallery in New York in 1962; Josep Renau made a photomontage showing Torres Campalans with Picasso. Critics were at first taken in, and the book is still sometimes classed among genuine biographies. Parallels with the author's own life have been noted in it. Gallimard published it in French in 1961, Verticales in 2021; Doubleday brought out an English translation in 1962.
Who it is for
A fake illustrated document, to be read as an art monograph; the invention lies as much in the apparatus as in the narrative.
Prizes and reception
A hoax that critics at first took seriously; the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid has exhibited the canvases of the imaginary painter.