An unknown Ana María Matute in full color

Every writer's home is usually filled with pens, quills, and inkwells, but not necessarily colored pencils. In the home of Ana María Matute, one of the most distinctive voices in 20th-century Spanish literature, were piled up assorted boxes of Caran D'Ache, "one of her favorites," as her son, Juan Pablo Goicoechea, recalls to La Vanguardia . "Every time she traveled, she bought stationery from the most popular brand in the country. She loved everything related to stationery."

Both Goicoechea and María Pilar, the younger sister of the author of Fireflies , were the ones who most enjoyed her art, as Matute always dedicated all kinds of drawings, crafts, and comics to them. However, this is a facet of her work that is unknown to many of her readers, since, beyond an illustrated edition of Forgotten King Gudú , her artistic talents have remained largely private.

“The drawings are scattered everywhere, as my mother always gave them as gifts, although I clearly remember the Pericón comic, which he wrote and drew when I was about five years old; and a Russian ballet he made with cutouts.” Both of these, along with other illustrations, will be on display starting June 25th in the exhibition at the Jaume Fuster Library to commemorate the centenary of his birth.

María Paz Ortuño is the curator of the exhibition, which was previously on display at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid and will remain in the Catalan capital until January 11. Days before the exhibition's opening, while finishing the packing at the Carmen Balcells agency for the transfer, she showed this newspaper some of these small crafts and illustrations, which are being seen for the first time in this exhibition, such as the self-portrait she made at the age of fourteen. With a fixed gaze, carmine lips, and hair that blends with the surroundings, the drawing, which dates from 1946, is one of the few surviving works by the artist. Her folders also contain maps she made for some of her novels and sketches she created at the age of thirteen, such as the one of Tón and his friend Pín, the servant.

“Illustrations helped him imagine scenes and put faces to his characters. In Olvidado Rey Gudú , for example, he has portraits of Gudulín and Queen Ardid. Images were closely linked to words,” Ortuño insists as he sorts through the selected section of the archive. Highlights include notebooks containing some of the originals he wrote during his youth, such as Tormenta.

Both this and other stories from the period are handwritten and accompanied by illustrations. Some of them are reminiscent of those of the British artist Arthur Rackham, whom the writer called her "dream maker" for the worlds he recreated and because he influenced her artistic and written work, to the point of filling her imagination with elves, gnomes, and other fantastical beings that usually inhabit the forests in fiction. In fact, her first story, written when she was just five years old, was titled "The Elf and the Child ," and it already demonstrated how clear her ideas were about what she wanted to write.

“Matute's mental universe was almost defined at the age he began to read and write,” said Moix.

This is also how Ana María Moix saw it, who in the prologue to the collection of her childhood stories writes: "Ana María Matute's mental and verbal universe was almost defined at the age she began to read and write." She also emphasizes her sensitivity for certain topics at such an early age: "It is surprising how the sensitivity of a five-year-old girl, born and raised in a bourgeois, economically well-off family, is already marked by the painful imprint left on her by the discovery of poverty."

She retained that emotional quality until the end of her life, just as she never hid the child within her. In this regard, later in life, the author herself wrote: "Only adults who retain something of the child they once were within themselves are saved from mediocrity and the baseness of feelings." She expressed this motto both in her writings and in her drawings, which recreated those imaginary worlds that had been developing since her childhood and which, in addition to Rackham, also reflected many memories of the forests of Mansilla de la Sierra, in La Rioja, where she spent summers with her grandparents.

“The drawings helped him imagine the scenes and put faces to his characters,” says Ortuño.

Of course, insists Ortuño, "just because he recreated these fantastical and, later, medieval universes, and populated his stories with these creatures so common in children's stories, doesn't mean his novels were children's stories. He used all this imagery to portray more complex themes and the often harsh reality."

Beyond literary pursuits, Matute also drew in his daily life as a means of expression. The letters he sent to his mother talking about his baby were often accompanied by portraits of the newborn, whom he affectionately called "Manzanita." "Some of the sketches, aware that the mail could take a while, imagined Juan Pablo as an older man. He drew the present and the future, he dared to do everything," according to the curator.

While it's true that Matute never completely stopped painting, it's worth noting that he took a brief hiatus during the same period he stopped writing. "He devoted himself more to crafts and handicrafts. He recreated small towns with all kinds of materials."

At the Barcelona café El Turia, Matute won his first literary prize.

Beyond the drawings, most of them unknown, Ortuño also shows La Vanguardia a magazine, Tertulia del Turia , whose interior has not been publicly revealed until now because, among other things, "very few copies exist." She keeps one of them and is encouraged to explain the history of the publication, since "it is quite unknown."

“On a few Fridays in February 1951, several intellectuals met at the old El Turia café, at 41 Rambla Catalunya. Among those present were Carlos Barral, Juan Goytisolo, John Richardson, and Fernando Fernán Gómez, as well as Ana María. Each had to present a story, poem, or play to the others. The winner would receive 15 pesetas, since each participant had to contribute one peseta. The winner was Matute with the story Do Nothing . The runner-up was Goytisolo with the story The Thief .

Although symbolic, this was Matute's first award. "From then on, he started winning everything. The Nadal, the National Narrative Award... and, later, others like the Ciutat de Barcelona and the Cervantes," Ortuño recalls, showing a notebook with the handwritten text of Pequeño teatro , which won the Planeta Prize in 1954.

“She had written it long before. She submitted it to Destino magazine and they asked her to type it up. When they read it, they saw she had talent, but they didn't dare publish it yet, as they wanted to make her known first. So she began writing a weekly section in the magazine, and the first story was "The Boy Next Door ." She ran to the newsstand to buy several copies. It was the first time she'd seen her name printed in a publication of this caliber, and she was thrilled. Some time later, at the age of twenty-one, her first novel, "Los Abel ," was released. It was considered a literary revelation and received a special mention at the 1947 Nadal Prize. A writer had just been born, and her legacy lives on to this day.”