The contribution of Menchu Gutiérrez is an unorthodox conference, a creative offering related to the life and work of Unica Zürn and Leonora Carrington. According to her own definition, it is “a dialogue between dreams, madness, a game, fantasy, imagination and poetry, which marked the life of the two artists and writers” linked to Surrealism.

Menchu Gutiérrez (Madrid, 1957). She has published several selections of poems, El grillo, la luz y la novia (The cricket, the light and the bride) (Entregas de la Ventura, 1981), De barro la memoria (Memory of clay) (Endymión, 1987), La mordedura blanca (The white bite) (winner of the Ricardo Molina Prize in 1989), La mano muerta cuenta el dinero de la vida (The dead hand counts the money of life) (Árbol del Paraíso, 1997) and El ojo de Newton (Newton’s eye) (Pre-Textos, 2005), plus the following prose: Basenji (Lumen, 1994), Viaje de estudios (Study travel) (Siruela, 1995), La tabla de las mareas (The table of the tides) (Siruela, 1998), La mujer ensimismada (The pensive woman) (Siruela, 2001), Latente (Latent) (Siruela, 2002) and Disección de una tormenta (Dissection of a storm) (Siruela, 2005).
She is also the author of the biographical essay entitled San Juan de la Cruz (Omega, 2003). Having translated E.A. Poe, W. Faulkner, J. Austen and W.H. Auden, among other authors, she collaborates with El País newspaper and different literary magazines and supplements.

With this film season, the CAAM provides the view of different writers whose work moves flexibly between theoretical reflection and literary creation; scholars and critics of culture and art who also enjoy fiction and often resort to a mixture of genres, thus dissolving the established limits.

What should have happened if Breton would have arrived in Buenos Aires instead of New York when he was exiled? Would Fontana have taken Pollock’s place if he had not been born in Argentina? Through this and other “fiction” and “counterfiction” of traditional art history, Estrella de Diego attempts to review the imposed hegemonic story, how relative authority is and the infinite possibilities of reviewing an imposed text.

Estrella de Diego is an essayist and Professor of Contemporary Art at the Complutense University of Madrid, where she obtained a doctorate in Art History, and has, among other academic honours, been the King Juan Carlos I of Spain of Spanish Culture and Civilization Chair at New York University. She has curated many exhibitions and she is the author, among others, of the following books: The sexed androgyne. Eternal ideals, new gender strategies (Visor, Madrid , 1992); Sad, sad Warhol (Editorial Siruela, Madrid, 1999); Dear Gala. The Hidden Lives of Gala and Dalí (Espasa, 2003); Journeys through uncertainty (Seix Barral, 2005) and The book of maps, (Editorial Siruela, Madrid, soon to be published).