Why Francis Bacon? What attracted you to the British painter, so linked to Madrid?
Because his painting made me uncomfortable, it stirred me up, his pictures I saw in museums and those I found in photos and publications. And my texts always begin with an inclement weather or an inner restlessness and at the same time an immense desire to shelter them or understand them in some way.
It means that there was an initial rejection, so…
Of course. Anyone who does not suffer a seizure the first time they see a Bacon painting, without even knowing who its author is, will find it difficult to continue their desire to understand, to want to know who and what is behind such a disturbing artistic proposal.
What does the novel or narrative essay ‘Bacon without Bacon’ tell?
The aura, the genius, the personality of Francis Bacon, who died in Madrid in 1992, at the age of 82, on a trip that his doctors advised against. A fiction based on his life, his work and those last nine days in Madrid in which he tries to surrender again to his way of living on the edge, bars, bodies, drinks, and, above all, to his job as an artist, already undertaking without strength, but with lucidity and passion intact, his last painting…
Define your work for us.
“I don’t understand painting, I just paint,” said Bacon. Imagine me. I am neither a critic nor an art expert, although I know all his work, but I know it from my sensitivity, from my emotional heartbeat, from my poetic vocation and my craft as a writer. Caught by the magnet of a unique work and artist. And when you are a writer, your passion for a subject is added to obsession, the result is a new book. A novel on which I spent half my life.
He hasn’t responded, I think.
He is right, but ‘Bacon without Bacon’ is the answer. For me, he is the artist who most radically brought to his canvases what André Malraux called “the fatal destiny of the human condition.” Deterioration, accident, exposure, the “brutality of events,” as he liked to say, in short, the most carnal and at the same time the most fierce part of living, also the most human…
Does it allude to living flesh?
That is the key, but not only to define Francis Bacon, but because that is what we all are. He himself said it, or his alter ego FB writes it like this in the novel: «My paintings are made of flesh because we are made of flesh. And we choke on flesh. And we enjoy flesh. And our flesh hurts. And even our heart is flesh. There is no more to it».
“I am neither a critic nor an art expert, although I know all of his work, but I know it from my sensitivity, from my emotional heartbeat, from my poetic vocation and my craft as a writer. Caught by the magnet of a unique work and artist”
You are also FB…
Someone said that my novel is a monologue in two voices. Maybe… In what is written, there is always one person, and there are all of us, because we all have very similar fears, doubts and colds, and fortunately, similar illusions, desires, little boxes of the soul. But I will never say what is of Francis Bacon and what of Fernando Beltrán in each paragraph… Maybe nothing, because everything already belongs to FB, the protagonist. But it is the readers who must say it.
I think it’s already been published for three editions on the charming Árdora label…
They are small editions, from a wonderful but humble publishing house, one of those that we could call heroic vineyards, as they now call wines that grow on very steep terrain –Bacon’s work is one, by the way–, but even so, it has surprised us all, me first, I did not expect this reception or the words of some readers…
Which ones are you referring to?
“This book has reconciled me with my shadows.” A woman told me this, thanking me for writing the book. I was going to thank her for her words in a conventional way, and she repeated the same thing to me again, telling me that she meant it very seriously. I have never been told anything more beautiful…
“Goya was his reference from a very young age. Then Picasso would arrive, and in the end he ended up dedicating his life to following in the footsteps of Velázquez. He even became obsessed with his Innocent X, of which he made hundreds of versions…”
Is it a useful book, therefore?
It is, yes, although that was not the intention, but if you think about it it is normal, because writing it also reconciled me with my shadows, my ghosts, my days with blemishes, as my mother said…, and I told her his mother to Bacon. Maybe also because Bacon’s work, although it is so aggressive, also ends up conquering you because of the beauty of the color… And because of his metaphors…
Are you referring to art?
I mean that it is a work that one understands with the passage of time, when life begins to show you the other side of its coin, age, deterioration, losses, close deaths, disappointment, the accidents of life. .. Bacon serves it raw to remind you precisely that there is joy, celebration, carpe diem, not wasting time. And he also does it by being a master of cadmium orange, the color I love most in his work…
Which Spanish artists did you love?
Goya was his role model from a very young age. Then Picasso came along, and he ended up dedicating his life to following in the footsteps of Velázquez. He even became obsessed with his Innocent X, of which he made hundreds of versions… And Lorca, let us not forget, because Bacon always relied – “to live and paint better,” he said – on the atmosphere and images of poetry.
How would you recommend facing a Bacon painting?
In solitude, naked, as in front of a mirror, and without any prejudice.
