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loving books was her childhood's safe conduct. If you were a woman but loved books, grandpa respected you; otherwise, you were only good for cooking, scrubbing, and having children. Books. The grandfather, copyist, painter, and patron of Galician artists in post-war Spain and beyond. Specifically in Galicia. And that attic covered in dust and books, and the smell of Mr. Santa Cruz's oils. The story of Rocío Santa Cruz -the granddaughter- is a tale, that of a Little Red Riding Hood without a wolf choosing her path at each crossroads. Of the letters she wrote, by hand and one by one, to the 60 bookbinders and restorers who were then listed in the Yellow Pages, only one received a reply, sent by Carlos Vera, a guild official at the National Library, Madrid. The master must have been amused by the girl's audacity, in 1985, at 18 years old.
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Aboard the Rías Altas express, the letter led her to learn the trade, which she already practiced as a game in the attic, during the restorer official's free hours: the institution's janitor would join them at snack time. At the same time, she studied "the master's gesture" at the municipal school of Antolín Palomino, a great Spanish bookbinder of the 20th century, according to the annals. The next crossing took the three from the National Library of Spain (official, apprentice, and janitor) to the Library of France in Paris, through an exchange request that –Rocío says– only they responded to. "It was the year Mitterrand inaugurated the Louvre pyramid (oh, la grandeur!), and there I am (barely 20)." And there Rocío stayed, and continued learning in a school comme il faut (École Estienne), she opened a first small bookbinding shop in Georges Brassens or the horse butcher's district of the French capital, in an old, tiny art deco boucherie and, years later, her first artist's book gallery on rue de l'Hôtel Colbert. Raíña Lupa was born, thus baptized during a pilgrimage of visual artists and poets on the Costa da Morte, to Alto da Moa, a sculptural rock formation that crowns Monte de O Pindo, where they say the last druid of the Celtic castro culture lies buried, interred at the hands of the Romanization of Galicia.
The digital tool, far from destroying the physical book, has saved it: it has never been published with such detail, such appreciation for paper, inks, and printing.Many art and book fairs later, at the turn of the new millennium and the digital revolution, Rocío Santa Cruz, Madame Lupa to the French, heads to Barcelona, a city with a long publishing and artistic tradition. What does she come to do in Barcelona? "In Paris I spent 15 years not only learning but also editing books for artists like Sicilia or Broto, or Barceló, for whom I made, for example, the cases to store Mali's travel notebooks. She was an editor trained in 19th-century bibliophilia, but she didn't want to make obsolete objects just for the sake of it." She gets on the digitalization train. "The book is experiencing a revolution comparable to Gutenberg'sThe digital tool, far from doing away with the physical book, has saved it: never before has it been edited with such detail, such appreciation for paper, inks, and printing. A visual artist makes their own book for very little money, puts it up for sale, and a gentleman in Japan buys it.The book is a perfect object that has no substitute, it happens to it like to the wheel. Anddigitalization has multiplied its possibilities to infinity.
She brings her Raíña Lupa, an artist's book editing workshop/gallery, from Paris and begins to collaborate with visual and conceptual arts, "because I am a contemporary person, I am interested in what is happening, living the present moment and evolving with time. I ask artists a question, what is a book to you? A book is a perfect artifact, and I work with them all the time as if we were making a book." She defines herself as "an editor at heart and a gallerist by market demands."
So, from the gallery in Consell de Cent, and from her visionary digital perspective, while most publishers throw up their hands in despair and hide their heads under the linotypes, she returns to the book she had never abandoned. ArtsLibris was born in 2009. Proposing the same round trip to people: "Just as I come to art through books. Because the book is not scary, entering a bookstore is not intimidating, while the world of galleries and museums is sometimes hermetic. The book is a close object that allows touching, which unfortunately is becoming increasingly difficult; we want to touch and see without an interposed screen. Last weekend, at the Gallery Weekend, people entered the gallery and were thrilled to be able to recover the pleasure of seeing live art. Well, the same thing happens with the artist's book: having it in your hands is a great added value and what the digital revolution has done is nothing but amplify its possibilities and quality."
They are not just bibliophiles and artists, there are as many types of visitors as genres of books, from those interested in illustrated children's books to collectors of codices.Three times a year, Rocío Santa Cruz (born Rocío San Claudio Santa Cruz, A Coruña, 1967) brings together creators with an immense and diverse audience at the ArtsLibris editions in Barcelona (the fair moved to the El Born cultural center from the original Santa Mónica Art Center, on Las Ramblas, where the fair was held for almost a decade coinciding with Sant Jordi, until the space became too small); Arco Madrid (its stands occupy an area of more than 600 square meters) and Arco Lisboa (ditto). "They are not just bibliophiles and artists, there are as many types of visitors as genres of books, from those interested in illustrated children's books to collectors of codices; and it is especially interesting for young people, because this publishing upheaval not only refers to luxurious art books, but above all has updated the (French) revolution of the 60s that wanted to get rid of publishers and published in stapled photocopies, copies that today are emulated and are objects of cult."
A whole very close to visual poetry, because hand in hand with poetry, that group of artists paraded in procession to Alto do Pindo to found Raíña Lupa in the 90s. And hand in hand with José Ángel Valente, she inaugurated in Paris, on rue de l'Hôtel Colbert, bringing together the great poet with the work of those who had illustrated his luminous words: Saura, Oteiza, Chillida, Tàpies, Sicilia, Broto, García Rodero, García Cácamo… "It was what I had seen in the restoration and binding workshop of the National Library of France, from Tristan Tzara's poetry illustrated by Miró to Duchamp's suitcase, where I realized that what I adored from my grandfather's attic, his illustrated collections, Doré's Quijote, was a wonderful craft, which I then continued to learn at the École Estienne (higher school of graphic arts)." She finished her studies at the French public school the same day the first computers entered through the door of the centenary building in the 13ème of Paris.
There's a question that creators generally detest because it's crude, but whose answer helps us understand them a lot. Why has ArtsLibris been and continues to be so well received? "After visiting many author and art book fairs in general, from New York to Brussels, I realized that they all responded to an Anglo-Saxon criterion, so I proposed to found in Barcelona, a city of great fairs, an exhibition with its own identity, reclaiming all our richness and diversity: we are southern Europe, we are Mediterranean, but also Atlantic and Ibero-American, and this is the strength of ArtsLibris, which is unique and different; a fair where not only English is spoken, but many languages are spoken."
Next stop? Thought. "We are focused on the relationship between philosophy and contemporary art, which is mostly conceptual and therefore draws from thought. We have invited major international publishers of thought and our first seminar, at the last edition of Arco, was led by the Chilean philosopher Andrea Soto Calderón. Rocío Santa Cruz walks towards the gallery's patio, which now bears her own name (Galería RocioSantaCruz, at the confluence of Gran Vía with Pau Claris), among cubes, dice, display cases, letters, words that make up the dense book/story of her history, the druid of paper. Not so far are her artistic roots, in the ocean that bathes Costa da Morte, the village of Caldebarcos, under the stone that forms sculptures in Alto do Pindo.