Library Exhibitions

Etching One Hundred Years of Solitude


Library Exhibitions

Etching One Hundred Years of Solitude


Gabriel García Márquez Through the Hands of Pedro Villalba Ospina

Fall 2018 – Spring 2019
Otto G. Richter Library, Floors 1 and 2

Pedro Villalba Ospina’s artistic evocation of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, brings to life a story that immerses the viewer in a timeless and magical literary world of love and loss.

The display of original drawings, etchings, and prints are a testament to the more than 20 years of passion and dedication Villalba Ospina has devoted to the work, culminating in the handmade bibliophile version, tabernacle-like, containing all of the elements of the exhibition and the artist’s lifework in one exquisitely crafted edition. Villalba Ospina’s personal papers and tools illustrate how he imagined and realized the pages on display, an audiovisual presentation that affords us brief glimpses into his processes and the emphasis on deliberate, manual creation. A great example is the artist’s handwritten journal, opened to the page where he estimated that the entire process of bringing to life García Márquez’s oeuvre would be completed in one year’s time. While one can argue that an artist’s work is never really finished, the work in this exhibition—over two decades on from that initial journal entry—serves as a testament to that which can be perfected and distilled with time, research, and immense creativity.

View a short video about the exhibition Etching 100 Years of Solitude.

View photos of the Exhibition Opening.

Access the Exhibition Guide.

 
The installation takes place on the Library’s first and second floors and was inspired and directed by Villalba Ospina’s concept of transforming the library into a book, where the walls offer a multi-dimensional perspective of the book’s chapters and invite the viewer to look closer, delve deeper, through his hands and unique vision, into García Márquez’s canonical and timeless text. The University of Miami Libraries is thrilled to materialize the touch and feel of myth and magical realism, as a celebration and representation of connecting us with the diverse talents, and literary and artistic contributions, which abound in and connect the Americas.