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Deep sorrow has caused in the world of culture the news of the disappearance of Juan Pérez de Ayala, grandson of Ramón Pérez de Ayala. Born in Mar del Plata (Argentina), Juan soon lost his father, also Juan by name. The early death of the latter had caused the novelist great pain. The grandson met him when his family returned to Madrid, a time when, like his brother Gustavo, an actor and translator, who had already disappeared, he was a student at Estudio. Juan knew his grandfather’s work very well, of which he made several critical editions.
We met Juan Pérez de Ayala, trained at the Complutense, in the effervescent Madrid of the Transition, in which he was close to Guillermo Pérez Villalta, who incorporated him into his generational portrait; to the Buades, in whose magazine he collaborated; to his soulmate, the photographer Jaime Gorospe; or to Pablo Sycet, who has fired him in a ‘Postigo’ sense.
Editor of the unforgettable ‘Poesía’ and collaborator of the Residencia de Estudiantes since at least 1987 (date of his exhibition on its founder, Alberto Jiménez Fraud), even then he was devoted body and soul to the cause of the poet-painter José Moreno Villa, regarding whom he knew everything. This was the case, also in 1987, with his retrospective at the National Library; in 1989 his reissue of ‘Trials of New York’ for Pre-Texts; in 1998 his monumental edition of the ‘Complete Poesies’, jointly by the Colegio de México and the Residencia, with which he would draw, in 2011, another sum, ‘Memoria’; in 1999 his exhibition at the Guillermo de Osma gallery; or in 2007 his exhibition ‘Ideographies’ for the Museum of Malaga and the Residence.
In 2005, with the aforementioned Guillermo de Osma, Juan Pérez de Ayala anthologized ‘The painting of 27’ for Caixa Galicia and the Malaga Municipal Museum.
Along with other specialists, they then undertook the arduous task of ordering Maruja Mallo’s Catalog Raisonné, published last year by the Azcona Foundation. Other figures he approached, always with the rigor and grace that are his trademark, were Federico García Lorca, around whom in 1998 he curated with Estrella de Diego and Fernando Huici the centenary exhibition for the Reina Sofía; Francisco García Lorca, brother of the former, to whom in 2003 he dedicated an exhibition in the Huerta de San Vicente and the Residencia; Joaquín Gurruchaga, of whom in 2000 he prefaced, once more for Pre-Textos, the ‘First poems’; Enrique Climent, of whom in 2006 he took care of a sample in the ABC Collection for the Valencian MUVIM; or Alberti, who in 2003, with Carlos Pérez and the signer of these lines, curated the centenary exhibition, once more at the Reina Sofía…
Juan Manuel Bonet
