Lasurt translates Graham’s performative gesture into a pictorial act, without forgetting the relationship with the work of Federico García Lorca that inspired its title: Poema del cante jondo (1931). This bilingual publication (Spanish and English) reinforces Lasurt’s investigative work in the contemporaneity of a historical event and its memory. Thus, the timelines that run through the book show in parallel the key dates of the works of Martha Graham and the piece by García Lorca that are part of Lasurt’s study (1922-1941), both in relation to the most important political events. current highlights (2019-2021).
The publication is accompanied by texts by Juan Guardiola (curator of the exhibition at the Federico García Lorca Center), Stamatina Gregory and Anna Adell, who review Graham’s works and the representation of suffering and terror in the still image regarding war Spanish civil society as facts that transcend the concrete to symbolize universal pain. For their part, Laura García-Lorca – the poet’s niece – and Terese Capucilli – the first dancer to perform Deep Song and who collaborated in the reconstruction of the piece in 1988 – provide very personal perspectives on the works of Graham and Lasurt.
