Álvaro Lapa

From 1976, the year in which he received a research grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lapa began working on a series titled Cadernos [Notebooks]. This series constitutes a group portrait of authors who share the notion of writing as the exercise of freedom and the affirmation of individuality. Louise Ferdinand Céline, author of Journey to the End of the Night (1932), belongs to this tradition. In this book, Céline brings innovation to literary language, using popular oral tradition and attempting to free the French language of all academicism. Caderno de Céline [Céline’s Notebook] was shown at the exhibition Quixote na Bastilha [Quixote at the Bastille], held at the National Society of Fine Arts (SNBA) in Lisbon in 1993. The work represents the pages of a writer’s notebook, rectangular forms on a monochromatic black ground. These forms are bordered by three vertical lines: white and tremulous on the two lateral rectangles, and in the central shape evoking a blood-red rip. In this simple and intense nocturnal ground, Céline’s narrative breathes. Journey to the End of the Night describes the trajectory of a society where destiny describes the way the life of an individual is hampered; a confrontation between mortality and the impossibility of love. Céline’s Notebook is the expression of this vision, turning its back to the world.

AS