Press Release

INDEX

1.- Exhibition details and credits ...... 3

2.- Introduction ...... 4

3.- Exhibition texts ...... 6

4.- Programme of side events ...... 8

5.- Catalogue ...... 13

6.- Filmmakers’ bios ...... 15

7.- Curator’s bio ...... 17

8.- General information ...... 18

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Sponsored by:

With the support of:

1.- EXHIBITION DETAILS AND CREDITS

«Metamorphosis. Fantasy Visions in Starewitch, Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers» is a production of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and La Casa Encendida Fundación Caja Madrid. The exhibition will at the CCCB from 25th March to 7th September 2014 and La Casa Encendida from 2nd October 2014 to 11th January 2015.

PROJECT DIRECTOR Rosa Ferré

CURATOR Carolina López Caballero

ADVISOR Andrés Hispano

CURATOR’S ASSISTANT AND COORDINATOR Miquel Nogués

EXHIBITION DESIGN Estudi Francesc Pons

GRAPHIC DESIGN Mario Eskenazi Dani Rubio

ACTIVITIES COORDINATOR Anna Escoda

AUDIOVISUALS Documentation: Gloria Vilches, with the assistance of Laura Rius Editing: José Antonio Soria Installation: CCCB Audiovisuals Department

PRODUCTION AND ASSEMBLY COORDINATORS CCCB Exhibitions Service CCCB Production and Assembly Unit

REGISTRY Registry and Conservation Unit

ASSEMBLY OF THE EXHIBITION Torrecilla Espais

LIGHTING CCCB Production and Assembly Unit

TRANSPORT Feltrero División Arte

INSURANCE Hiscox Europe Underwriting

And the support of the External Resources and Information Service, Administration and General Services, and the CCCB Documentation and Debate Centre.

2.- INTRODUCTION

«Metamorphosis. Fantasy Visions in Starewitch, Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers»

Starewitch Švankmajer Quay Brothers

Fantasy as a redoubt of absolute freedom arrives at the CCCB with Starewitch, Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers, key figures in animated movie-making, whose work is presented in depth here for the first time in Spain.

Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers are creating an installation specially for the show that also brings together works by Goya, Ensor, Kubin, Arcimboldo, Méliès and Luis Buñuel, plus many more.

The exhibition “Metamorphosis”, curated by experimental film specialist Carolina López Caballero, presents the oeuvre of four key figures in animation cinema: the Russian resident in Paris, Ladislas Starewitch (1882-1965), a pioneer in the genre, the Czech master Jan Švankmajer (1934) and the unclassifiable Quay Brothers (1947), recently the subject of an exhibition at the New York MoMA. This exhibition is a coproduction of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and La Casa Encendida Fundación Caja Madrid, where it will continue after its run at the CCCB, from 2 October 2014 to 11 January 2015. Though little known to the general public, these filmmakers are hugely influential in various fields of contemporary creation as references for, among others, filmmakers Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam. This is the first time that the work of these four artists has been presented in depth in Spain, but what makes it a real international event is the fact that it brings together the work of these four animators engaged in an explicit dialogue: the Quay Brothers are self- confessed admirers of Jan Švankmajer, and the three are accompanied by Starewitch. The exhibition swings back and forth between the specific world of each of these artists and their shared universe, with the direct participation of Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers, who are producing an installation specially for the show. The leading thread is a presentation of their careers in cinema and the pieces they have used and constructed to make their films: sets, puppets, drawings and objects.

Alongside it, an array of literary, artistic and cinematographic references illustrate the influences recognised by the artists: fairytales, horror stories, the world of dreams, the cabinet of curiosities, pre-enlightenment science, alchemy, magic and illusionism come together in the exhibition galleries in the form of works by foremost creators like Francisco de Goya, James Ensor, Alfred Kubin, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Méliès and Luis Buñuel. This is an imaginary that ranges from dark romanticism, symbolism and surrealism to the present day, especially in genres regarded as marginal, which in the hands of these animators become the most radical modernity. The exhibition sets out to rediscover and awaken curiosity in a brotherhood of artists who with their radicalness, imagination and their very stance are open to reinterpretation in the framework of culture today and a contextualization of their potential for subversion. The “Metamorphosis” experience (the exhibition plus its parallel activities of a film cycle and talks) begs a reflection on the curiosity/knowledge duality and the new role of the marginal in contemporary creation. At a time of oversaturation of information, it is important to redefine the concept of marginality.

Like the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th century, the exhibition breaks the logic of relations between objects and between sources of materials, juxtaposing different categories to create an eccentric landscape. A landscape between sleeping and waking, where innocence, cruelty, voluptuousness, magic and madness rub shoulders. A disturbing surrealist landscape that is poetic and lucid, sometimes grotesque, sometimes phantasmagorical, populated with fable insects that love and suffer, puppets that laugh at the world or refuse to give in to their obsessions, characters who play, who dream, and who love the unproductive and the futile. The project reflects on the interest that many contemporary creators have in ways to generate meaning which, as in the Kunstkammer, organized and structure themselves regardless of strict hierarchy, like the avant-garde associative techniques of collage and assembly, prompting us to wonder whether the Internet is the new cabinet of curiosities of the 21st century.

3.- EXHIBITION TEXTS

THE SECRET LIFE OF OBJECTS Metamorphosis presents the works of four key figures in the field of animated films: the pioneering Russian animator of Polish origin who made his home in Paris, Ladislas Starewitch (1882-1965), the Czech master, Jan Švankmajer (1934), and the Quay Brothers (1947), who were born in Pennsylvania but have lived in London for the past three decades. Three unique filmographies that, nonetheless, have a great deal in common: an eccentric universe of slumber where innocence, cruelty, voluptuousness, magic and madness coexist. A troubling, poetic, lucid and, at times grotesque, at times phantasmagorical, landscape of people who love the unproductive and futile. Theirs is a cinema of resistance against narrative conventions which is impervious to the rationalising hygiene modernity has imposed. In the face of the world of the adult and the correct, Starewitch’s imagination, Švankmajer’s provocation and the Quay Brothers’ permanently convalescing characters put themselves forward as an unexpected invitation to freedom. Animated cinema is the demiurgic art par excellence: matter comes to life and is transformed in the hands and imaginations of the creators. They, more than anybody, know about the secret life of objects. The exhibition also showcases a large number of artistic and cinematographic references which trace the spheres of interest these filmmakers are drawn to: fairytales, horror stories, the world of dreams, cabinets of curiosities, pre-Enlightenment science, alchemy and illusionism.

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A FOREST For centuries, forests marked the boundaries of civilisation and became a refuge for the magical and mysterious. By entering their deceptive paths and imposing nature, the central characters of fairytales embark on a journey of initiation fraught with dangers and challenges from which they emerge transformed, aware for the first time of their capabilities. The forest is the night, a symbolic journey to the terrifying subconscious onto which we can project our innermost fears, the space of the primitive and atavistic. It is the realm where the big bad wolf lives, as well as fairies and goblins; the realm over which adults have no control.

LADISLAS STAREWITCH Starewitch was a pioneer and undisputed master of puppet animation, a self-taught filmmaker, a trained anthropologist and an amateur entomologist. He was born in Moscow in 1882 to Polish parents and made more than 100 films in Lithuania, in Russia and, from 1920 onwards, in France. His early passion for drawing and photography and fascination with nature, particularly insects, which he had collected from a young age, came together to create a unique body of work. His first animal characters were actual insects but he went on to make puppets that were practically indistinguishable from these real-life models. To these he added a wide variety of fauna which lost none of their wonderful and somewhat disturbing realism.

Many of Starewitch’s tales are inspired by traditional fables, however his most celebrated ones are based on his own stories. His talent for narrative rhythm, technical inventiveness and for imbuing his roguish characters with life, make each film a masterpiece which combines Gogolesque absurd humour with poetry or political satire. The success of the series of adventures starring the dog Fetiche brought Hollywood knocking, but Starewitch rejected its advances and continued working in his little studio on the outskirts of Paris with his small production team but with absolute freedom. His wife Ana Zimmerman was his assistant; his daughter Irene worked behind the camera as well as being co-writer and animator; and his other daughter Nina acted in many of his films. In spite of the recognition Starewitch received in Moscow in the years leading up to the Bolshevik revolution, and in Paris in the 1920s and 30s, he died in obscurity in 1965. In the 1990s, his films were rediscovered and restored. Starewitch has been praised by directors such as Nick Park, John Lasseter, Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. Jan Švankmajer considers him "the Méliès of animation" and the Quay Brothers have described him as a master.

JAN ŠVANKMAJER The Czech artist Jan Švankmajer (1934) is considered one of the most well-rounded, consistent and unique filmmakers of his generation. His body of work illustrates, like no other, the therapeutic, transgressive and resistant role of art on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Jan Švankmajer’s work brings together the cultural traditions of his native Prague – including puppet theatre, the theatre of masks, the Semafor group’s theatre of small stages, the audiovisual avant-garde of the Lanterna Magika and even the imprint the wondrous court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II had left on the city in the 16th century – and his surrealist affiliations. Lack of communication, bureaucracy, sex, the metabolism, textures, food, childhood, fear, decomposition, the absurd, and black humour are just some of the central themes and motifs in his works. Švankmajer made his first films in 1964 but in 1972 he fell foul of the censors and was forced to stop production for seven years. In the 1980s and 90s, Švankmajer earned a reputation as one of the most fascinating contemporary animators. This was due to his feature-length international co-productions and the recognition he achieved at festivals around the world. Although Švankmajer established his own recognisable style from early in his career, he has continued to reinvent himself in his most recent works. Jan Švankmajer’s wife, the artist Eva Švankmajerová (1940-2005), was one of his most important and outstanding collaborators. She was also a member of the Czech surrealist group, and worked as art director on many of his films to which she brought her own trademark style influenced by folk art. She also created many of the promotional posters for his films.

QUAY BROTHERS The Quay Brothers are filmmakers and screenwriters born in the United States in 1947 who currently live and work in the United Kingdom. They are identical twins who love forgotten objects and small things and were drawn to cinema in pursuit of movement and music from the field of drawing and graphic design.

Their films reveal the influence of the central-European cultural scene, particularly the works of Polish and Czech graphic designers, filmmakers and writers. Roman Cieslewickz, Waleryan Borowczyk, Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Jan Švankmajer, Jan Lenica, the Swiss author Robert Walser and the Uruguayan Felisberto Hernández are some of their main sources of inspiration.

Their work stands out because of its technical sophistication, the musicality of the images and the painstaking attention to staging which is shown by their Dormitorium: the dioramas used in their films together with their disturbing puppets.

Their documentaries about medical collections also reveal their fascination with science, its paraphernalia and relationship with the monstrous. Their territory is the sinister and imprecise threshold that doesn’t distinguish between sleep and wakefulness, reason and madness and the organic and the mechanical.

Their film Street of Crocodiles (1986), based on a short story of the same name by Bruno Schulz, was chosen by Terry Gilliam as one of the best animated films of all times.

They collaborate regularly with composers and musicians on theatre, dance and opera projects.

4.- PROGRAMME OF SIDE EVENTS

AT THE XCÈNTRIC ARCHIVE You’ll be able to watch a comprehensive selection of films by the four animators in full and on demand. Only while the exhibition is on! Admission free.

A UNIQUE CONVERSATION Jan Švankmajer, Quay Brothers and Ladislas Starewitch’s grand-daughter Léona- Béatrice Martin-Starewitch, in conversation with the exhibition curator Carolina López. Date: 26th March at 7.30pm / CCCB Hall

THE QUAY BROTHERS OPEN THE «XCÈNTRIC SCREENS METAMORPHOSIS» FILM RETROSPECTIVE

PREMIERE OF THEIR LATEST FILM Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H.; a conversation with the Quay Brothers and the screening of some of their little-known works. The session includes one of their most widely acclaimed films: In Absentia. Quay Brothers: In Absentia, 2000, 19 min; Sanatorium (work in progress), 8 min; How Strange My Lover Was, 1969, 10 min; Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H., 2013, 26 min [premiere!]. Date: 27th March at 8pm / CCCB Auditorium

DURING MUSEUM NIGHT ON 17TH MAY: «METAMORPHOSIS» MARATHON

 Sublime desire. A film marathon for those who, in the words of the Quay Brothers, «desire without end». Scènes amusantes de la vie des insectes, Ladislas Starewitch, 5 min; La Vengeance du ciné-opérateur, Ladislas Starewitch, 1911, 10 min; Un chien andalou, Luis Buñuel, 1929, 17 min; Institute Benjamenta, Quay Brothers, 1995, 104 min; Spiklenci slasti (Conspirators of pleasure), Jan Švankmajer, 1997, 78 min.  Animac presents. Stop-motion, yes! A selection of recent films made with this animation technique used by Starewitch, Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers which is as old as cinema itself. It is currently enjoying renewed popularity among young filmmakers. The films being screened were shown at the last Animated Film Festival of Catalonia, Animac (Lleida, 20th- 23rd February 2014, www.animac.cat). On a loop all day  Free admission to the exhibition. Date: 17th May. 7pm to 1am

AND ON MUSEUM DAY, 18TH MAY: VISUAL SHIFTS AND FEMALE TRANSFIGURATIONS

 Special programme of films from the Barcelona Women’s Film Festival. The programme invites you to explore the common threads among filmmakers which are central to their working practices and used to explain the body, oppression, desire and all kinds of mental states based on women’s experiences. They are associated with the themes dealt with in the exhibition “Metamorphosis” Metamorfoza, Martha Colburn, 2013, 7 min; Heura que m’envaeixes el ventre i la follia (Anna Petrus, 6 min) and La mort blanca (Marta Vergonyós, 6 min), pieces from the collaborative film Ferida arrel: Maria-Mercè Marçal, 2012; Biorxa, Lydia Zimmerman, 1994, 6 min; At Land, Maya Deren, 1944, 14 min; La souriante madame Beudet, Germaine Dulac, 1922, 38 min. Single session at 6.30pm.

 Free admission to the exhibition. Date: 18th May. 11am to 8pm

CONCERT-SCREENING THE METAMORPHOSIS BY FRANZ KAFKA BY THE QUAY BROTHERS WITH THE PIANIST MIKHAÏL RUDY PREMIERE!

In association with LOOP / SCREEN Festival The Russian-born French pianist and the Cité de la musique in Paris commissioned this project. The film is screened with live piano accompaniment by Rudy, performing the music of Czech composer Leoŝ Janáček. Shot in digital video, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is an avant-garde combination of stop-motion animation, puppetry, and live action. Date: 6th June. CCCB Auditorium. 8.30pm (Part of the LOOP / SCREEN Festival (29th May-7th June) www.loop-barcelona.com)

«XCÈNTRIC SCREENS METAMORPHOSIS». FILM SEASON. March-May 2014 Xcèntric, the CCCB cinema programme, is holding a complementary film season featuring individual screenings of films by the filmmakers featured in «Metamorphosis». The season puts the works by the pioneering puppet animator, Ladislas Starewitch, the surrealist films of Jan Švankmajer and the metaphysical, dark universe of the Quay Brothers alongside some of their key sources of inspiration, including the animations by the Polish director Walerian Borowczyk and the Russian Yuri Norstein, the early filmmakers Georges Méliès and Charley Bowers and the surrealist cinema of Buñuel. A season where literature plays a central role through adaptations of works by Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Walser and Bruno Schulz among others. The themes covered by the films include the irrational, primordial and initiatory, transformation, the pre-science age, illusionism and others that were discarded by the modern age but continued along their underground path to bubble up in the works of these filmmakers which have set the benchmark for new generations of animators and artists. Screenings on Sundays 30th March and 6th and 27th April at 6.30pm and Thursdays 10th and 17th April and 15th May at 8pm. For further details about the programme visit the website: www.cccb.org/xcentric/ca/

CONVERSATION SERIES «IN ANOTHER WORLD»

«Metamorphosis» revisits a group of artists whose radical imagination placed them on the margins of dominant discourse. These conversations will enable us to reread and put in context their subversive potential within a current framework.

 Possibilities for dialogue 26th March at 7.30pm Encounter with Švankmajer, the Quay Brothers, Léona-Béatrice Martin-Starewitch and the exhibition curator Carolina López.

 A history of marginalisation Wednesday 4th June at 7.30pm Where is the periphery? Creation, obsession, subversion. In 1996, the Quays made the film Institute Benjamenta or This Dream People Call Human Life, based on Robert Walser’s novel Jacob von Gunten, published 90 years earlier. Why should we read Walser today? What is the true power of the marginalised or inadequate? Dora García, Enrique Vila-Matas and Jordi Costa

FOR THE FAMILY

 Animated cabinets of curiosities. Animation workshop with A Home In Progress Film Ages 6 and up. Sundays 6th and 27th April and 4th and 25th May at 11am.

 Morning sessions for families (+6) The Tale of the Fox. Le Roman de Renard, 1929-1930 (1941 sound version in French), 63 min. Dir. Ladislas and Irène Starewitch. Le Roman de Renard is a classic medieval fable brought admirably up to date by Starewitch. Comment naît et s’anime une ciné-marionette (short documentary showing Ladislas and Irène Starewitch working in their studio), 3 min. Saturday 29th March, 12 noon. Through the Looking Glass. Něco z Alenky (Alice), Jan Švankmajer, 1987, 84 min. «Close your eyes or you won’t see anything», says Alice in Švankmajer’s first and widely acclaimed full-length feature: an Alice who is poles apart from Disney’s. The session also includes two short films by Starewitch and the Quay Brothers. Stille Nacht I: Dramolet, Quay Brothers, 1988, 1 min; La Voix du rossignol, Ladislas Starewitch, 1923, video, 13 min. Saturday 17th May, 12 noon

 The exhibition with the family The CCCB provides free educational material so you can enjoy the exhibition with your family. Ask for yours when you buy your ticket.

 Exhibition creative space Make your own short animation or shadow puppet theatre at the end of your visit. We provide the materials which you are free to use. Weekend activity.

EXHIBITION TOURS

 «Metamorphosis» seen by… Writers, creators and scientists give their own personal interpretation of the exhibition in a series of gallery talks, from May onwards. See the CCCB website for further details.

 Guided tour of the exhibition every Saturday and Sunday at 11.30am (free with your exhibition ticket)

 Pre-booked group tours. See also the activities organised by the social and educational programme Apropa Cultura and the Programa Alzheimer. Guided tours for schools tailored to different educational levels.

See the suggested projects for schools on www.cccbeducacio.org.

AND IN SUMMER

Culturnautes. The CCCB’s Summer Camp for kids and youngsters aged 6 to 16. In July it will be running animation workshops run by A Home In Progress Film. Enrolments open on 22nd April www.peretarres.org.

«METAMORPHOSIS»: A MAP BEYOND THE CCCB

Activities designed so visitors can rediscover the collections of other museums and venues in Barcelona and Catalonia that have affinities with the worlds featured in the exhibition «Metamorphosis».

Discover a real cabinet of curiosities at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona - Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona Starting on May 15th, the Jardí Botànic de Barcelona will be hosting the exhibition Salvadoriana. Tresor del Patrimoni Científic. www.museuciencies.cat

The Quay Brothers’ Selection at the Museu Frederic Marès (Barcelona) From 22nd April you’ll be able to visit the Museu Frederic Marès and see the Quay Brother’s personal selection of objects from the Collector’s Cabinet.

And we also recommend you visit the:

Museu del Joguet de Catalunya «Window on the exhibition...» dedicated to the Czech animator Hermína Tyrlová and the figures of Ferda the Ant and Kuku which she donated to the museum.

Museu del Castell de Peralada This museum inside a castle houses a magnificent late-19th-century library and an extensive collection of antique glass and ceramics.

Museu del Cinema Col·lecció Tomàs Mallol (Girona) A collection of devices that left our great-grandparents open mouthed reveal what the first cinema screenings were like.

Teatre Lliure (Barcelona). Performance of Franz Kafka’s Informe per a una academia (A Report for an Academy). Directed by Xavier Ricart and Ivan Benet. 8th to 25th May 2014.

La Puntual (Barcelona) Puppet show held in May and June to tie in with the exhibition «Metamorphosis».

Museu dels Autòmats del Tibidabo (Barcelona) We recommend a visit to this spectacular collection that includes 42 original automata from the late 19th and early 20th centuries representing different cultural traditions. The museum is housed in an art nouveau building.

Antic Amfiteatre Anatòmic. Reial Acadèmia de Medicina de Catalunya We recommend a visit to the unique Sala Gimbernat which was once home to the College of Surgeons and where you can still see the 18th-century surgical amphitheatre.

5.- CATALOGUE

Details: 192 pages Format: 17 x 24 cm 300 images Two editions: Catalan / Spanish with English at the end

Catalogue structure: Institutional texts: President of Barcelona Provincial Council, Directors of the CCCB and La Casa Encendida General texts: Carolina López, Brian Dillon, Pascal Vimenet, Andrés Hispano Texts about the artists: Jordi Costa, François Martin Original texts by the artists: Jan Švankmajer, Ladislas Starewitch, Quay Brothers Filmography

GENEALOGY OF DREAMS

From 26 March to 7 September, the CCCB will be presenting an exhibition of great aesthetic and intellectual ambition. “Metamorphosis. Fantasy Visions in Starewitch, Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers” can be viewed as a riveting investigation into the genealogy of a specific imaginary realm: an extremely potent imaginary realm, which has a far-reaching influence on contemporary creation, on creativity today. The films of Ladislas Starewitch, Jan Švankmajer and twins Stephen and Timothy Quay (the latter recently featured in a retrospective at the MoMA in New York), are the result of their specific geographies and contexts and are, naturally, different. However, there are clear connections and points of convergence between the techniques used by this group of animators, the themes they deal with and, above all, the sensibility they show. They all position themselves voluntarily on the margins, looking for spaces far removed from convention and the mainstream, where they can exercise their radicalism and give free rein to their subversive potential. I spoke, above, about an imaginary realm. The exhibition, which the CCCB has coproduced with La Casa Encendida in Madrid, leads us deep into a world of fantasy that, in fact, is not foreign to us at all but somehow strangely familiar. It is an imaginary realm lying halfway between dreams and reality, between the tender and childlike and the wicked and monstrous, between magic and obsession, between innocence and the grotesque and inhospitable. It is an imaginary realm associated with fairy tales and romanticism, taxidermy and surrealism, symbolism and Kafkaesque fear, or the cabinet of curiosities. However, the exhibition does not merely introduce its visitors to a specific imaginary realm but goes beyond it, as it endeavours to show the works and personalities of the great artists – Starewitch, Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers – responsible for giving it form. It sets out to trace the genealogy, the tree with branches leading to the films of Tim Burton and the works of certain renowned visual artists working today. Within the framework of this exploration, the exhibition being presented by the CCCB also seeks to identify and highlight the key influences and points of reference which inspire and explain the works by these artists. I believe one of the great merits of ‘Metamorphosis’ lies in that fact that it does not settle for merely showing the fascinating and visually dazzling imaginary realm of the animators, who are the focus of the exhibition, but it also helps us put in context and better understand the importance and scope of their works. This effort to go further that I refer to would involve – if you will allow me the metaphor – not being content with simply showing the treasure – although it is an exuberant, dazzling treasure – but trying to draw the maze of paths and byways, sometimes visible and sometimes hidden, that should help us discover it, marvel at its range of nuances and enjoy it to the full. We hope we have at least come close to achieving our aim.

Marçal Sintes Director, CCCB

6.- FILMMAKERS’ BIOS

QUAY BROTHERS (Philadelphia, 1947)

Born in the US and resident in the UK for more than three decades, these identical twins are at the cutting edge of worldwide animation. We owe some of the best puppet films of all times to these alchemists of image, trained as graphic designers. In animations such as Street of Crocodiles (1986), The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (1984) and In Absentia (2000), and fiction films like Institute Benjamenta (1995), they reveal the powerful influence of the rich Central European cultural scene, particularly the work of Polish and Czech artists: graphic designers of the fifties and sixties, filmmakers and narrators such as Waleryan Borowczyk, Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Jan Švankmajer and Jan Lenica, and Russians Ladislas Starewitch and Yuri Norstein. Their work is an exquisite distillation of these and other references, such as Swiss writer Robert Walser, sublimating and offering them up to a new public thanks to the excellence of their technique, the musicality of their images and painstaking staging. Admirers of Švankmajer, the Quay Brothers were responsible for instating the Czech artist on the postmodern scene of the eighties. The latest piece by the Brothers Quay is inspired by The Flooded House, by Uruguayan writer Felisberto Hernández. The New York MoMA recently devoted a major exhibition to them.

JAN ŠVANKMAJER (Prague, 1934)

Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer is considered unique in the world of animation, perhaps the most complete and coherent artist of his generation. Maker of films such as Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), Alice (1988) and Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), his oeuvre illustrates like no other how art functioned as therapy, transgression and resistance on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Lack of communication, bureaucracy, sex, digestive processes, scatology, terror, death, the absurd and black humour are some of the core themes of his subversive works. But the talent and importance of Jan Švankmajer, who explicitly situates himself in the tradition of surrealism, goes beyond his contributions to the cinema with the creation of an artistic body of work associated with his films (often his source of inspiration) and a body of textual theory that reveals his conceptual greatness. Brought up in the fertile tradition of the Czech puppet theatre, Švankmajer’s work is a singular avant- garde point of reference that draws on numerous sources (from hermeneutics to André Breton, via symbolism and the texts of Sade and Carroll) but that also develops his own absolutely original obsessions. Jan Švankmajer has made more than 30 films (five full length), mostly animation. His work enjoys a great reputation in the film world that has extended in recent years to the plastic arts with a proliferation of exhibitions of his work in museums all over the world, such as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, the House at the Stone Bell in Prague and the Kunsthalle in Vienna.

LADISLAS STAREWITCH (Moscow, 1882 – Paris, 1965)

Pioneer and undisputed master of puppet animation. Entomologist by training and self-taught filmmaker, Starewitch made over one hundred works, in Russia, Lithuania and France, between the early 20th century and the mid-sixties. After debuting in the cinema in Moscow, directing films with actors, he discovered animation as a perfect vehicle first to present his scientific observations and later to give language and form to his unbridled imagination. His characters (insects and all manner of anthropomorphic animals) are straight out of a unique, enchanting cabinet of marvels. One hundred years after his first creations, his stories—many of which, like La cigale et la fourmi (1927) and Fleur de fougère (1949), are free adaptations of fables or fairytales—, his modern syntax and the extraordinary nature of his puppets continue to excite the admiration of animation professionals and artists in all fields. His cinema, with singular works such as Fétiche mascotte (1933) and Le Roman de Renard (1941), has been enthusiastically praised by directors like Terry Gilliam, Nick Park and John Lasseter, and had a decisive influence on the work of filmmakers such as Tim Burton and the Quay Brothers. Starewitch is one of the few filmmakers who, without fear of exaggeration, can be called essential, truly original. After years of oblivion, restoration of his work began in the nineties. Today, his films are being screened all over the world, and he is set to take the step from cult filmmaker to becoming a major discovery for the general public.

7.- CURATOR’S BIO

Carolina López Caballero is a graduate in Fine Arts from Barcelona University and in Animation Cinema from the West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham (England). She is the director of Xcèntric, the cinema of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, and Animac Lleida, the Catalonia International Animation Film Festival. She edited the book Xcèntric, 45 pel·lícules contradirecció and contributes articles to specialist animation publications. She was the founder and director for 10 years of “Anima’t”, the animation section of the Sitges Festival, where she devoted retrospectives and exhibitions to the work of leading contemporary animators. She curated “ArtFutura” and “Little Stories of the Cinema” (MACBA), and has programmed film cycles for other museums and arts centres. She has created personal and commissioned audiovisual works in the USA (where she worked for MTV), England, Italy (RAI), Island and Spain (Canal Plus, TVE, Tesauro films).

8.- GENERAL INFORMATION

«Metamorphosis. Fantasy Visions in Starewitch, Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers» 26th March to 7th September 2014

Opening times Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 8pm (closed Monday except public holidays)

Guided tours In Catalan: Sunday at 11.30am In Spanish: Saturday at 11.30am

Price: 6 € Reduced admission: 4 € for senior citizens, under 25s, large families, single-parent families and groups (15 people and over). Free admission for under 12s, Friends of the CCCB, unwaged, holders of the Catalan Government teacher’s card, and Sundays from 3pm to 8pm.

For downloadable high-resolution images and videos visit http://www.cccb.org/en/premsa

CCCB Press Service · Mònica Muñoz and Irene Ruiz · 93 306 41 23 · www.cccb.org