Collectable

The purity of a scissors’ cut

Antoni Llena explained by Antoni Llena

‘One afternoon, while walking down Ronda de la Universitat, I saw in a shop window several rolls of wrapping paper in vulgar colours. They immediately caught my attention, but I didn’t buy them. A few days later, however, I went back and bought them because I couldn’t get them off my mind. I stuck them to the walls of my studio and began sketching on them with ink and pastels, but very unsatisfactorily. Suddenly, I began cutting them with a craft knife and everything flowed. It reminded me of my childhood, when I used to spend hours cutting bits of paper. The purity I found in a scissors’ cut was something no pencil could ever give me!’

Antoni Llena tells us how he discovered the technique of paper cut-outs that he uses in many of his works in the MACBA Collection and which can currently be seen in the MACBA Collection: Prelude. Poetic Intention exhibition. He explains all in Memòries de fum (Smoke Memories), a creative autobiography recently published by L’Avenç.