Cuadernos de Campo

Three hundred years ago, King Philip V founded the Royal Site of La Granja de San Ildefonso in which we find ourselves, particularly celebrated for its monumental fountains, an outstanding example of the Baroque and its ability to transform nature into a visual and sensory experience that still manages to impress us. The sculptural ensembles, the spectacular jets and water features were a display of power inherited from the absolutist and anthropocentric vision of Louis XIV, grandfather of Philip V and architect of Versailles Palace, a benchmark of French landscape architecture promoted by the Bourbons. But it is also true that the origin of La Granja de San Ildefonso stems from a chance encounter between a sensitive and melancholic king, fond of hunting, fishing, horse riding and music, and a forest that was in a certain sense miraculous.

Beyond the limits of the Royal Site, established at the foothills of the Guadarrama mountain range, the streams of the Morete, the Carnero, the Nevero, the Chorranca and Peñalara forcefully carry water of unusual purity. It was these crystalline streams that first moved the king, who decided to establish his spiritual retreat rather than his court there. We can affirm that the foundational work of this Royal Site was the complex hydraulic system of channelling streams that had to be tamed in order to turn untamed nature into a garden and water into a vital and aesthetic resource.

The project we present in these galleries offers a privileged view of the liminal space between the five streams, their surrounding woods and the pond that regulates the supply and feeds the fountains, called El Mar and located in the upper part of the gardens, beyond whose borders few visitors venture. In a way, we are presenting inside the palace unpublished photographs of the places that prompted its creation.

Javier Vallhonrat accepted the invitation with the sensitivity and rigour that characterise his artistic practice, which for decades has been inextricably linked to the natural environments with which he relates in an unusual way. For him, nature is not a landscape in front of the camera lens, nor a motif of inspiration, nor an abstract canvas on which to represent his own creative vicissitudes, but a space with which he relates at length and in silence, which he traverses with effort, which he experiences physically, searching for the optimal hours of dawn and dusk. A time that cannot be instigated or accelerated, for he will not take a photograph without first having produced an intimate and poetic rapprochement between his consciousness and what surrounds him. It was a simple question that opened up possibilities that could barely be intuited: ‘I want to see the precise place where nature dialogues with the intelligence of man’.

The compositions presented in this exhibition are the answer to this question. They are also the result of an artistic process that not only represents the visible, but also the emotions and reflections that can flow from our connection with the environment. They are panoptic images that allow us to travel with water, from its free expression to its gradual channelling thanks to intact, still efficient ingenuity. Nature does not always dialogue with man’s intelligence. Sometimes it is subdued by collective ignorance or recklessness. But observing it with intelligence and respect, understanding it and caring for it as we did here, allows us to imagine another possible future.

María Santoyo