Coetzee begins his immersion in the Prado

On the threshold of twenty years since the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to John Maxwell Coetzee in October 2003 — and when the reader has not yet managed to forget the impact of his novel Accident— the South African writer arrived in Madrid for the inauguration of the project write meadow. This Tuesday he made his first tour of the museum’s collection — where he will perform during a three-week stay — accompanied by the director of the art gallery, Miguel Falomir, and the head of the conservation of Flemish painting and northern schools up to 1700, Alejandro Vergara.

With the support of the Loewe Foundation and cooperation with the magazine Support in Spanish, the initiative invites authors of accredited international prestige to reinterpret, from literary creation and narrative imagination, museum artworks. On his walk, Coetzee could observe, seduced, the paintings of Patinir, Bosch, Van der Weyden and, finally, the central gallery, stopping at the exhibition Picasso, El Greco and Analytical Cubismand in the room Las Meninas.

On July 3rd, Coetzee will hold a conversation open to the public with his Spanish translator, Mariana Dimópulos, in the museum hall. The author — who little by little is consolidating the excellent reception on the Spanish publishing market — has published his latest novel, Polishin Spanish instead of the original English.

Coetzee interrupted his usual stay in Adelaide (Australia), where he taught at the university, to settle in Madrid, making the public art gallery his center of activity and contemplation. Based on this process, he will write a text related to the Prado, the first in a collection that will focus on exploring the expressive connections between fiction and plastic art.