{"id":16629,"date":"2015-04-11T01:30:45","date_gmt":"2015-04-11T00:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=16629"},"modified":"2015-04-11T01:30:45","modified_gmt":"2015-04-11T00:30:45","slug":"more-alberto-solsona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2015\/04\/11\/more-alberto-solsona\/","title":{"rendered":"More Alberto Solsona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona01.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona01.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Opus 5 (1968).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s dismaying to learn that Alberto Solsona, the creator of the wonderful <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2015\/04\/09\/the-dracula-annual\/\"><em>Agar-Agar<\/em><\/a>, was only 41 when he died in 1988. It&#8217;s also a little disappointing to discover that his work for comics is the least part of an artistic career begun in the late 1960s; I&#8217;d been hoping there might be other work in the same style. Solsona&#8217;s early paintings are very much in the Pop Art sphere which makes them more attractive to me than his later shift into a form of Abstract Expressionism. Between painting he was working as a book illustrator and a comic artist in magazines for children. Among the examples of the latter the page from <em>Strong<\/em> (1971) is the closest to <em>Agar-Agar<\/em>, unsurprisingly when they both date from the same period. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macba.cat\/en\/solsona-alberto\" target=\"_blank\">This museum page<\/a> has examples of many more paintings and prints.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona02.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona02.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Strong (1971).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona03.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona03.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>El asombroso doctor Zas (1971).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Solsona also had a humorous strip about King Arthur in <em>Strong<\/em> but I prefer the drawing style in this one, yet another example of the diluted psychedelic graphics that filtered into children&#8217;s stories in the early 70s. (See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/04\/21\/david-chestnutts-psychedelic-fairy-tales\/\" target=\"_blank\">this post<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona04.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona04.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>S\u00edmbolos (1971).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Not very surprising seeing American symbols mixed with swastikas\u2014the war in Vietnam provoked many such responses\u2014but I wonder how much of a risk it was to do the same with the Spanish flag when the Franco regime was still in power. This painting also refers to Superman, a character that <em>Agar-Agar<\/em> takes a dig at.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona05.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona05.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>El tel\u00f3n (1972).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona06.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona06.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Duquesa de Alba (1972).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona07.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona07.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Haza\u00f1as b\u00e9licas (1972).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona08.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona08.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>El arte de la guerra (1973).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona09.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona09.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Autorretrato (1973).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A self-portrait.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona10.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona10.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Retrato de una desconocida (1975).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona11.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona11.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Haza\u00f1as b\u00e9licas (1975).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"solsona12.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/solsona12.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Nada que decir (1976).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2015\/04\/09\/the-dracula-annual\/\">The Dracula Annual<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opus 5 (1968). It&#8217;s dismaying to learn that Alberto Solsona, the creator of the wonderful Agar-Agar, was only 41 when he died in 1988. It&#8217;s also a little disappointing to discover that his work for comics is the least part of an artistic career begun in the late 1960s; I&#8217;d been hoping there might be &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2015\/04\/11\/more-alberto-solsona\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;More Alberto Solsona&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,9,44,14,17],"tags":[7178,977],"class_list":["post-16629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-comics","category-painting","category-politics","category-psychedelia","tag-alberto-solsona","tag-dracula"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4kd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}