Montmartre, once a rural hill of the 18th district of Paris, was at the end of the 19th and early twentie Beautiful era (1872-1914). His studies and affordable workshops, together with the unique environment of the area and his artistic community, attracted renowned painters such as Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or Vincent Van Gogh, among others. Picasso, in particular, was attracted to Montmartre and resided in the Boat-to-seean old piano workshop converted into study.
That legendary Bateau-Lavoir, located at number 13 of Ravignan Street, welcomed many of the most outstanding figures of modernism: painters and sculptors such as Juan Gris, Constantin Brancusi, Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso or writers and poets such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob or Pierre Reverdy. But behind art and creativity, another world of dangers, misery and hunger that the writer José María Goñi reveals when we tell us the real story and silenced as a family secret of the family of Francisca Calpe, his own grandmother.
The dark side of the avant -garde
Francisca, the protagonist of The Spanish of Montmartre (Bookman) was born in 1885 in a small town in the province of Castellón. Thanks to his father’s last wills and unusual, he had access to education, but his desire for freedom and his desire to know the world took her to Barcelona, where her arrival will coincide with the beginning of a revolutionary process known as The tragic week. A tumultuous era that we already met in books like The city of prodigies by Eduardo Mendoza o The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.
Bookman La Española de Montmartre – José María Goñi
In the midst of anarchist chaos, Francisca will meet the great love of his life: Carlos, a young painter and former student of Pablo Picasso, whom the authorities seek for their involvement in the revolt. Both will flee to Paris and will be integrated into the fertile artistic avant-garde concentrated around the Montmartre neighborhood and will reside in the famous Bateau-Lavoir.
Together with the painter from Malaga and other artists and intellectuals of the time, our protagonist will live endless unique experiences. Immersed in this Bohemian and Libertine atmosphereit will soon discover a world in boiling, where formalisms are blurred by transferring the established limits and norms. But as usually happens, everything that shines is not gold.
The non-legendary bateau-lavoir.
In an interview with La Razón, the author of the book demolishes the myth of Montmartre at that time talking about hunger, misery and crime They reigned without control. “Their bohemia life of their brothels, drugs, alcohol, total debauchery. But their life was a very difficult life because they were very subject to their classmates. They hit the great life, after spending the night out there, and nothing happened, but they could not explain what they had done because if not, they were losses, some golms.”
“In recognition of my grandmother Francisca, and all those women who fought for their freedom“, It is the author of the author for the protagonist of this addictive novel. As José María Goñi adds, he has written the story of The Spanish of Montmartre“As my grandmother told my mother and my mother told me.”
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