Autor: Gabriel Pacheco
Capa dura. Livro silencioso (sem texto).
In a lush garden, two sisters are looking at each other. They might be chatting, they might be questioning each other in silence. One is sitting on the ground holding an open book in her hands, the other is leaning against a pillar, mulling.
These highborn damsels are wearing lavish dresses, decorated respectively with maps and mythical monsters. A compass lying on the ground evokes images of travels and adventures. Three scarlet apples hanging above the head of the standing woman soon catch our eyes, revealing right from the start the ancient roots of the story told in pictures and words—a story about temptation and disobedience. In the following image, the blue starts to conquer the scene, entering from the right and slipping into the white and the light colours of the day. Bluebeard has arrived, a wealthy man with a terrible past: he was married several times, but all his wives had disappeared without a trace. The two sisters get in his golden carriage and ride through the woods with him, until they reach a magnificent castle. This is just the beginning of a dream that will soon turn into a nightmare for the younger sister, Bluebeard’s wife to be. Not long after the wedding, the man leaves for a six-month travel, and when he says goodbye to his wife he gives her the keys of all the rooms in the castle. He tells her she is free to invite her friends over and have fun together, enjoying delicious meals as well as all the comforts of the sumptuous dwelling… There’s only one room she can’t enter, for no reason, or she will be severely punished. The wife promises she won’t open that door, but sometimes curiosity is stronger than any promise, even stronger than fear…
After Messer Gatto (#logosedizioni, 2017), Gabriel Pacheco keeps drawing inspiration from Charles Perrault’s fairy tales, with a new illustrated version of La Barbe bleu. First published in 1697 within the French anthology Histoire ou contes du temps passé, better known as Contes de ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Tales), Bluebeard never failed to charm readers through the centuries, inspiring endless reboots in the fields of literature, cinema and visual arts. Letting himself be seduced by this dark tale, Pacheco shows us Bluebeard’s secret by guiding us through lush country landscapes as well as the sumptuous rooms of Bluebeard’s castle. The harmony between inside and outside spaces relies on his palette, dominated by cold colours such as silver grey and various shades of turquoise, which he alternates with gold and warm, earthy colours. The two-dimensional, stylised, characters, as well as all the natural and architectural elements, stand out from the background with a collage effect. This book is full of wonderful and refined details, such as the architectural geometries recalling Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s engravings, and the embroidery of the clothes, inspired by nature and sky maps.
A unique version of this fascinating and mysterious story as interpreted by Gabriel Pacheco.