Camilo José Cela He was the founder and director of Papeles de Son Armadans. The birth and development of this magazine were linked to the writer's presence on the island of Palma de Mallorca for over thirty years. It was a publication conceived in Mallorca but with the ambition to reach beyond its borders. By January 1956, the magazine already had enough contributors for its first issue. Among them were Gregorio Marañón, Alonso Zamora Vicente, José María Castellet, José María Moreno Galván, Dámaso Alonso, Carles Riba, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, and Ricardo Gullón.

Its founder began to forge a close relationship with local and peninsular intellectuals. Cela's ambition with this literary project materialized in several decisions: on the one hand, he offered its pages to exiled Spanish writers, such as Rafael Alberti, Max Aub, Emilio Prados, and Luis Cernuda. On the other, he committed to publishing texts in the three vernacular languages ​​of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as authors who published in English. Finally, Papeles de Son Armadans It hosted the work of renowned visual artists, including Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Antoni Tàpies and the members of the El Paso group.

These collaborations, born from the fusion of literature and art, were completed with the publication of books such as Joan Miró. Drawings and lithographs o A Sheaf of Fables Without Love. Illustrations by Picasso. the result of the joint work between the Malaga painter and Cela. Papeles de Son Armadans It dedicated its 37th issue to the El Paso group, featuring four previously unpublished children's drawings by Picasso, dedications from Miró and Escudero, and illustrations by El Paso members, as well as the group's definitive manifesto, published here for the first time. The verses born in the Poetic Conversations of Formentor They were also published by the magazine, in the form of poems illustrated by Cela himself and by Canogar, Millares, Tàpies, Saura or Viola, with a cover by Miró.

This exhibition focuses on the publishing history of Papeles de Son Armadans This offers a unique opportunity to approach the figure of the A Coruña-born writer and Nobel Prize winner, who would have turned 100 in 2016, from a different perspective. Literature and the visual arts have rarely celebrated such an effective and surprising union as that achieved in the pages of Papeles de Son Armadans, an extraordinary magazine that reached 276 monthly issues, between 1956 and 1979.