Class writing. SUBJECT: “How I imagine as older.” Development: “I want to be a great novel painter.” Signed: Beatrice Alemagna, eight years. On the sheet, which the artist still retains, the verdict that received: “Brava!” Appears. It serves to remind you that then your future was clear. And that he hated get up early and go to school. “For me, childhood is the age of freedom. The school was an obstacle to my infinite desire to play. In the end, I have looked for a job in which I play, ”he says on the phone. He learned as self -taught to draw. He began writing and designing his own stories. And better and better notes were won: awards, exhibitions, applause. Add about 40 children’s albums translated and worshiped in half the world. In a literature that is fixed more in the theme or the line, it stands out as one of the few stars with an unmistakable name, surname and style. The 52 -year -old woman has far turned – and some sacrifice – the purpose of that girl. Incidentally, he has coined another definition of his work: “Illustraut”.
Because sometimes he puts images to a classic of another author, such as Gianni Rodari or the Grimm brothers. But in the vast majority of occasions he takes care of everything: drawings, words and how to put them together. Even a fall, while playing football with his daughters, Alemagna gets up with a new story: thus the recent Berta and me (Combel), on the link between a girl and the crust that appears on her knee. One of his most famous creations, on the other hand, emerged from insomnia. He says that a dilemma attacked him one night: “I make books for children, but what is a child?” The question kept looking at the roof. After a while, he took her to the table, with his heart agitated. From that frenzy a work entitled came out as the question that shook her. He thought he would not even publish it. However, he became “a book-escalón”, one of those who changed his career. The editorial Éccomi now rescues ¿What is a child? in Spanish.
“A child has small hands, small feet and small ears, but that is why he has small ideas,” he reads in his pages, right next to a boy determined to get the mucos. Here are part of the essence of German. Humor and poetry, simplicity and amazement, the art that embraces imperfection. And, above all, much respect and curiosity for its interlocutors. His signing to collaborate with the Pompidou Center, in Paris, was forged when a responsible approached to ask why he was still the only adult who came alone, one session after another, to a children’s film cycle. “Writing for children must be sincere. I don’t want to venture a message. It is as if we went for a walk, let’s see where we can arrive, ”he explains. And he adds: “Unfortunately, my books pass before adults.”
“By misfortune?”
—I would love to reach the public directly to me, but it has no power: social, economic, political … It is a pleasure that adults can be sensitive to my work. But I am sorry that he is always leaked by his gaze.
From there several problems are born, according to German. Account that he has witnessed high tears, flat, without theatricality, capable of matar To his works. With echoes of Roald Dahl, who champion her “conspiracy with children against adults”, the author also regrets the “growing mojigatería, which cuts, censures and close her eyes.” The wonderful mini-dipe (Combel) was published in several countries a priori Very developed without blood stains in the knife that teaches a butcher to the protagonist. In the United Kingdom, specifically, he found one of the “most castrants towards freedom.” Sometimes, Alemagna rejects the scissors, even at the expense of the edition. Others prioritizes the book to go ahead. And he is also worried about the flood of children’s literature with a “prefabricated” message. “I don’t see just write to have effects, to send a moral. Books-product about something concrete or to teach to be generous discourage me. I try to create a story that leaves something. And find an urgent reason for each book, not to be useless, ”he details.
Someone says that has always loved enlightened albums. As a child, I hid them under the pillow, spoke with them, asked them for help when it was wrong. Their parents used to offer, in their home in Bologna, accommodation to acquaintances and friends who went to the City and Youth Literature Fair of the city, the most important in Europe. Upon leaving, there was always some volume that did not coup in the suitcase. And so German began to file Drawings and texts in Czechoslovak, Russian or Japanese. Or, rather, to invent your own version of what you saw. Today, these countries welcome books and exhibitions of the Boloñesa artist. And the 62nd edition of the Fair of its hometown, from March 31 to April 3, plans to celebrate it as one of the most important guests.
There he will offer a master class. And will review a triumph built based on insistence and crafts, without computer shortcuts. “I am interested in the direct relationship with the material, in manual work I find the error fundamental. Making I find ideas, solutions. I need to stay in the precarious one, capuco, ”he says. Empathy towards failures, insecurities, strips and losers stars The five disasters (At a good pace), Not in dreams!, The most of the most! o A great day (Combel). Alemagna tries to make the surreal and the plausible touch. Light its pages with orange or fluorescent pink, but its fears for the direction of the world have taken it lately to more black. Once the illustraut He explained that he considers himself a contradictory person. His works, somehow, are liked.
Not always, yes, it works. ¿What is a child? He swept Italy, but barely sold in France. “I try never to ask myself if what I am doing will like it. Before having my daughters, I wrote for the girl inside me, and I cared about everything else. Since they are, I realized that children could laugh, or cry, with a book. I started becoming aware of the importance of that, ”he shares. Hence the success would reduce the certainties: “I began to say that almost conceited, with the assurance that this was my path. The more my works find the public, the more doubts increase. But now they have become an engine of my work. ”
A new impulse. Although German already had enough. It was swore that it would fulfill that promise made at age eight, “it cost what it cost.” For now, he left for his country, and takes half of his life near Paris. But the highest price has been demanded in his free time: “I have lived for 25 years within a kind of self -denial. I have never managed to register in a course of something, I can not accept the idea of putting limits on creativity. My friends often criticize me for that. I am rendered to the need to advance, create. I don’t grant myself the right to forget my work. ” Despite so many efforts, it continues to suffer the same stereotypes that regrets virtually any author of children’s or youth literature: “We are not considered authentic artists.”
At least, Alemagna receives more relevant awards. Of his daughters, his first readers, severe but benevolent judges, according to the mother. And of the thousands of little ones who enjoy their albums. Days ago, 44 years later, they put note again in a class. After a meeting in a school, a girl wrote on a piece of paper: “How do you get magic with your books?”
