This is a journey through the works of the renowned cartoonist and also discovers his multifaceted figure as an architect, disseminator of culture and social entrepreneur.
The exhibition can be visited free of charge until 31 January 2021, every day between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.
“What is caricature? The inner physiognomy of people. To express with a stroke the features of the character, to bring out the soul, the light that comes from the person, from above. If you put in a piece of life and a piece of society, or a monument, the light is fixed there, but in contrast to the light, you can see the black of the ink or the space that remains white. That has been my life: trying to draw, to tell, in one way or another, and to bring the light that comes from above. It’s like this building we are in, that if we look up, we can see the clouds and the light.
This is how José María Pérez, Peridis, the renowned graphic humorist, expressed himself at the inauguration of the exhibition he is leading, open to the public from today, in the Clock Building in the Port of Valencia, to which he has dedicated a vignette and which he has compared to a place “in Florence or the Verona of Romeo and Juliet”. The artist has also shown his pride and gratitude for the space dedicated to his career in this emblematic place and has compared the drawing to the paella, which “has a bit of everything” and its preparation “requires time, wisdom, like any art and science”.
The President of the Port Authority of Valencia (PAV), Aurelio Martínez, highlighted, for his part, the importance of highlighting the figure of the multifaceted Peridis and having its works in the “Casal del Port”. “It is not easy to present such a multifaceted person, but I would like to stress that, in addition to his important work as a cartoonist who has accompanied our generation with his strips every day and has brought a smile to our faces, there is a much more complex person behind him. For me, his social side is very important, his commitment to training and the employability of people with fewer resources, as well as his participation in innovation initiatives”, he stressed.
Ortifus was also present at the inauguration and thanked “Valenciaport for its work in promoting the Clock Building as a social centre at the service of the city” and said that “it is an honour to share this space with a reference point and master like Peridis”. In fact, Ortifus has created a cartoon to illustrate the moment: “Welcome to the city of music and humour, my friend Peridis”.
A look at a multifaceted author
Graphic humour, architecture, writing, cultural dissemination and social entrepreneurship are the characteristics that define the life of José María Pérez and are included in this exhibition, which puts the finishing touches to the cultural activity of 2020 in the Clock Building and welcomes 2021. It can be visited free of charge until 31 January, every day between 11:00 and 18:00.
This exhibition is an initiative of the PAV in collaboration with the Quevedo Institute of the Arts of Humour of the Foundation of the University of Alcalá to make known the graphic humour of Peridis as a vehicle for the transmission and diffusion of cultural, environmental and social values. The fact is that this reference of the cartoon, with more than 40 years of professional career, defends some pillars with which the PAV identifies itself and which are gathered in the different exhibitions that the Clock Building has hosted in the last months.
Thus, over more than 80 vignettes and illustrations, most of which have been published in the newspaper El País, where he has worked since the newspaper was founded in 1976, reveal the cartoonist’s career from its beginnings in the 1960s to the present day. At the centre of the exhibition is the column in which the former president Adolfo Suárez used to stand, and throughout the illustrations we find personalities such as Zapatero, Trump, Rajoy, Pedro Sánchez,… without forgetting the references to environmental, cultural or social issues.
Likewise, the exhibition makes visible his collaboration as a restorer and disseminator in buildings that are representative of our cultural heritage. It is a look at the work of a multifaceted and committed person, in which he explains, also with audiovisual elements, both the creative process of his vignettes and his project of Employment and Social Entrepreneurship Shuttles or his work in cultural dissemination.
The “Casal del Port” is committed to graphic humour
The Peridis exhibition is another step towards recognising the outstanding graphic humorists who have illustrated the Clock Building, an initiative that enriches our way of seeing the world. In previous editions, the installations of the Port of Valencia have featured two other geniuses of humour, Ortifus and Forges, exhibitions that were well received, with 10,500 and 12,000 visits respectively.
In recent years, the PAV has recovered the role of the cultural centre of the Clock Building to bring the “Casal del Port” closer to the citizens. Through a wide range of exhibitions, themes related to port activity have been mainly expressed and received by a significant number of visitors. But port activity has not been the only protagonist; the building has also hosted exhibitions of different themes, such as “Unforgettable Images”, a collaborative exhibition in which Valencian society has shared its view of the Covid-19, carried out thanks to the photographs sent in by the citizens themselves.