LLEI D'ART 13

enmuseos, galerías, bienales y ferias. También, como acabo de mencionar, tomo en cuenta el consejo de especialistas para completar el patrimonio y que éste abarque distintos estilos y movimientos, occidentales y orientales, del siglo XIV a la actualidad. No busco obras guiado por referencias económicaso tendenciasdelmercado,puesmi objetivonoes lucrar oespecular conellas;mi objetivoes siempre fortalecer el conjunto de obras por el placer y conocimiento que me aportan, así como por el compromiso que he adquirido de conservar, promover y difundir el arte. allowedme topreservemymemories and to fulfil my dreamof abibliographical collection. I startedwith school and travel books and associated reading, and gradually I put together an important archive of books on art, literature, philosophy, history and anthropology, amongst other topics. In the art section I included pieces on history, theory and criticism;monographs onpainting, sculpture, drawing and architecture; catalogues raisonnés andpieces from exhibitions of themost select artists from theworldof art, design and photography; and finally specialised encyclopedias, dictionaries andglossaries. This vast collection has allowed us todocument and reference the collection’s works, aswell as identify the variousmovements and schools in them. The art collection has in turnbecome the helped the library grow: each artist has various books dedicated to their life, career andwork, so that the number of works in the library has grown toover fifty thousandbooks. Do youneedbooks tounderstand art? My first encounter with art was throughbooks. As a child I liked to see thepictures of artworks in them, andover time this led tome taking an interest in artists’ careers and lives. I became an avid reader of biographies andmonographs to findout how they had lived and how they had come to take aplace in art history.Without adoubt, I think books help you to complete your knowledge and experience of art; it can even arouse aPASSION for thismanifestationof human creativity. How interesting tobring together an artistic and documentary legacy at the same time… As I havementioned, the art and library collections are dreams that I havebeen able to fulfil that have over time enriched eachother, fortunately. I amnourished by eachof them and, givenmy responsibility as a collector, I try to apply academic rigour toboth collectionswith the support of the staff that workwith them and various specialists; they study and catalogue theworks, occasionally suggesting acquiring certain works andbooks to cover aparticular artist, style or period. In addition, the specialist staff are responsible for drawingup aperiodic assessment and restoration plan topreserve the artworks. Treasuringprint editions of art will soonbe a romantic passion… Personally, I think that rather thanbeing romantic, it is something historic, necessary or personal; printed books anddocuments are a tangible and relevant reality. Here I am thinking about national or school libraries, wheremillions of pieces of printedmaterial are kept tobe consulted regardless of the number of people in theworld, andwithout the need for an technological collection. Or rather, bookshops are still sellingbooks publishedby small publishing houses or thebigpublishinggroups; this shows us that there is somethingmore than romanticism that persists – the need to have something real like apaper book, andnot just a virtual file that is dependent on the technology of El coleccionista junto a una obradeWilliamClarkeWontner The collector looking at one of hismasterpieces byWilliamClarkeWontner Foto cortesía JuanAntonioPérezSimón/ Photoby courtesy J. A. PérezSimón 9