At the heart of the Condom-Toro twinning committee team, Michel-Henry Bouchet has been working for several months with Casa de Cultura de Toro to prepare the exhibition of paintings by Luz Serrano, which will be presented from April 10 to 24. This exhibition celebrates the awakening of cultural exchanges between the two cities, following the Feria del Libro, the reception of the Band’à Part, and the Boëte à jouer last year.
This beautiful exhibition of Luz Serrano’s paintings owes its existence to the twinning between Toro and Condom. Behind every successful cultural initiative, there are generous enthusiasms and a lot of discreet work with Casa de Cultura’s director, Cristina Tamames, on one side, and Michel-Henry Bouchet on the other.
The exhibition showcases more than thirty paintings that trace several decades of widely recognized work north of the Pyrenees, presented in numerous public places and private galleries. The beauty of the venue, the magnificent Palais du Marquis de Castrillo from the second half of the 16th century, can only contribute to its success. Undoubtedly, this painting exhibition, for the first time within the twinning framework, will breathe new life, much needed, into artistic, cultural, and economic exchanges between these two cities with so much to share.
For Luz Serrano, living obligates painting and vice versa. She remains deeply and authentically Spanish, tied to her native Aragon region, while also being wholly French and attached to her Occitan region where she lives and works. The common thread between these two regions, through the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees she crossed in her youth, is the heart of her painting. Her paintings contain masses of clouds, dark scree, and processions of “journeymen,” each step a rupture and a step towards freedom.
This dual lineage, loyalty – exiled homeland-welcoming homeland – has given Luz great tolerance and a freshness and freedom that some find surprising. She attributes this openness, curiosity, and ability to avoid clichés (even in her paintings) to the painful privilege of turning her back on the hills of Aragon for the fortuitous circumstances of a birthplace at the dawn of the leaden years. A civil war added horror to the fact that those known, envied, or feared were the first to be killed. And since exile is like a “lock” between uprooting and the discovery of a hospitable land, she never completely encloses her paintings in lead or sepia tones; Luz Serrano’s light, fragile yet tenacious, rejects resignation.
