PAINTING & CONSTRUCTION
César Fernández Arias
ISBN: 84-934038-0-6
104 pp.
26 x 16 cm
P.V.P.: 20 euros

For a long time now, the illustrator-painter-sculptor, César Fernández Arias, has been regularly teaching art workshops for children. The children call him César rather than teacher, and he does not call his classes ART: they are painting and constructions, words that allude to the gesture of touching, to the fact of getting stained and dirty and the need to carry out manual labour. The art will come later or maybe it won’t, as any artist knows, but the first thing is to become familiar with the materials that we use to express ourselves.

It is frequently thought that all children are innate artists and that anything that a child produces is a stroke of genius. When one expects a masterpiece, this can cause a certain degree of frustration if one fails to accomplish this objective. As a result, children can end up interrupting and abandoning their artistic efforts. As César knows, it is essential for a child to enjoy what he does and he must consider it as playing, although for children –which is something that grown-ups don’t seem to be aware of– playing is something really serious.

César currently has his workshop in the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid: it is a space devoted to play and creation and is an authentic experimental laboratory. This book contains some of the proposals from this workshop, as well as César’s comments and an important selection of the children’s creations.

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