Barcelona is always in good news when Ildefonso Falcones announces a new book.
The city of Barcelona is a kind of recurring scene at different times. A place where this author locates on many occasions his always exciting plots in which the most vivid intrahistories move between different historical periods.
The set always achieves that narrative synergy that enhances the chronicle aspect of a time and that intensifies the evolution of characters facing past destinies with the aroma of memories for the surprised reader, with its fantastic touch on some occasions or with the open crudeness of what it was in others.
This story revolves around Dalmau Sala and his passion for painting. The first days of the XNUMXth century pointed to this patrimonialization of the artistic exclusively for the wealthy classes. A claim too strong for a Dalmau who arrived from the suburbs of the city and who becomes a Dorian Gray. An artist who is gaining his share of recognition but on whose canvas of his existence he is carrying vices and resignations with the person he was in his past.
Because behind it it has the essence of what it was. The reasons that led him to devote himself to painting as a form of expression. It's easy for him to get carried away by opulence and that opportunity provided as an escape from his misery. But a true artist always ends up discovering and recognizing the emptiness that approaches when one stops being what one really is.
There are also especially turbulent days. That first decade of the XNUMXth century in Barcelona offered a dichotomous glimpse between the announcements of modernity and modernism and the burden of latent conflicts of all kinds of politics and society.
And Dalmau cannot live on both sides of that reality. Because in transit you can end up leaving shreds of skin and soul. As hard as it may sound, it is easier to find the authentic in the darkest part of reality.
But only back from the paradoxical infernal circles of booming success can Dalmau resume the best path, the one where the commitment to his art, his love, his passion and the search for change converge from the most open and necessary rebellion of which his paintings they will serve as a powerful testimony.
You can now buy The Painter of Souls, the new novel by Ildefonso Falcones, here: