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Libros del Zorro Rojo

Life Is a Dream (Illustrated)

Life Is a Dream (Illustrated)

Our review

If you thought the Golden Age classics were dusty, get ready! This edition, as soon as we saw it, seemed spectacular to us.

Libros del Zorro Rojo has done what it does best: take a masterpiece and give it a new skin. In this case, the skin is provided by the Argentine artist Gabriel Grün, and it is a weathered skin, stained with oil paint and full of textures. His illustrations portray a Segismundo who is half beast, half philosopher, locked in a tower that smells of damp and madness.

Reading this version of Life Is a Dream is to witness a hallucination. Grün perfectly captures that oppressive and dreamlike atmosphere where reality unravels. It's a book to leave open on the living room table and get lost in the details of its plates, which look like paintings from a dark museum.

A visceral edition for those who seek beauty in the terrible.

Book details

Synopsis

King Basilio, fearing a prophecy that his son will be a tyrant, locks Segismundo in a tower from birth. Years later, he decides to drug him and take him to the palace to test him. When Segismundo awakens as a prince, he unleashes chaos. Returned to his prison, he is led to believe that it was all a dream. This masterpiece by Calderón de la Barca poses the most famous existential question in literature: What is real? Are we free or slaves of our destiny?

About the edition

What makes this work unique are the paintings by Gabriel Grün. His style, indebted to the great classical masters but with a surreal and grotesque touch, fits Calderón like a glove. Centaurs, rusted armor, and stormy skies shape the protagonist's mental labyrinth.

About the authors

The writer: Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Madrid, 1600-1681). If Lope de Vega was the force of nature of Spanish theater, Calderón was its architect and its philosopher. Soldier, priest, and court poet, he brought the Golden Age to its maximum technical perfection. His works not only entertain but also pose humanity's great doubts about freedom, honor, and reality. With him, the Baroque reached its intellectual peak.

The illustrator: Gabriel Grün (Buenos Aires, 1978). This plastic artist seems to paint from another century. His technical mastery of oil and his realistic style—which draws from the great masters of the Renaissance and Baroque—allow him to create images that are both disturbing and beautiful. In this work, Grün sculpts with paint the anguish and darkness of Segismundo's cell.

Technical specifications:

  • Author: Pedro Calderón de la Barca
  • Illustrations: Gabriel Grün
  • Publisher: Libros del Zorro Rojo
  • Binding: Hardcover (Cartoné) and high-quality finishes.
  • Edition: 2018
  • Format: Large format (ideal for appreciating the oil paintings).
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