A major exhibition of more than 30 international artists and musicians - from flamenco singer Enrique Morente to the deadpan artistic duo of Gilbert & George - will open this weekend at the summer retreat in Granada of the early 20th century Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.
The poet's summer home in La Huerta de San Vicente will be peppered with modern tributes to his life and work, including photographs, music, sculptures and paintings.
In a photograph entitled In bed with Lorca, now hanging in the poet's bedroom, Gilbert & George lie side by side beneath a painting of the Virgin Mary like two corpses at a wake. American poet and performance artist John Giorno has planted a "poetry fountain" in the garden of the house where the poet wrote some of his best works, including Yerma and Blood Wedding. Spanish sculptor Cristina Iglesias has created a dream-like bas-relief that hangs just outside the bedroom, which Lorca would have been able to see before falling asleep. Sarah Morris, known for her flashy geometric designs, has painted a canvas inspired by the Moorish tiles in the poet's bedroom.
Each day of the exhibit, dubbed Everstill, British multimedia artist Tacita Dean will send a postcard from Cadaques, symbolising the tumultuous friendship between Lorca and the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. "Lorca is an artist's poet," said the curator, Hans Ulbrich Obrist, co-director of international projects at Serpentine Gallery of London. "It started with Dalí and continues with the younger generations. I knew many visual artists who said they were inspired by Lorca."
Obrist has brought similar visual and performance arts to the homes of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Sils Maria and the architect Sir John Soane in London. But he said it was rare to find a personality as rich as Lorca's, who in his lifetime created a "magic triangle" of literature, cinema and visual art. The traditional Andalusian home itself, he said, was also a source of inspiration. "We can really say that the artists give the house a new life," he said.
