Celebrating National Poetry Month: Part IV

The great Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, revolutionary and contemporary of Federico García Lorca, was also a painter, and in 1945 wrote an entire book of poems dedicated to artists and to colors. As with most poets, Alberti’s work was a paean to all that imbued his surroundings, and it was art that surrounded him in abundance. In his poem To the Paintbrush he begins,

To you, baton for shaping music,
conductor of the sea which opens the canvas,
silent, saturated pilgrim of night,
the crepuscular half-light, and dawn…

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His words find an echo in the way many painters fashion their creative process, and it was quite unique in the instance of Alberti, where the literary muse and the visual mind worked as one. Continue reading