I arrived at La Nacion magazine brought by Esteban Feune de Colombi. I illustrated his brilliant column “Remates” for several years. His short and sharp texts launched me into the exercise of producing a weekly page. When that column ceased publication, I began to illustrate longer and more lyrical texts of Francis Mallmann also on a weekly basis.
How much is produced under the pressure of deadlines! Every Monday I receive an email with a text that I quickly scan for “the drawable”. In two or three days I must deliver an image ready to put on the page. Sometimes this is evident in the text. If the column talks about lemons I go through the kitchen, I take a lemon, I put it in my studio with the best light and I draw it. If a character is relevant in the text, I goog his picture and make a portrait. I prefer these simple drawings that agree with complicity to what the author says. Other times, when the text is abstract, lyrical or metaphysical, an image must be imposed because it does not have it within. In those cases, I suffer a little to do something that lives with the text and the page.
Ideally, the drawings should have a poetic conversation with the text that enriches the whole in favor of the page and the magazine. I am interested in the abstract value of the illustrations. How visually and conceptually embellish the page and by extension the entire publication and, going beyond, the reader’s experience. I seek to bring visual happiness to the person who will see that drawing. Someone will see it happen on the cell phone screen, someone while at the Sunday barbecue, someone in a waiting room months after it has been drawn. I hope they received the love.
To renew the enthusiasm weekly, I look for these drawings to be intertwined with the other artistic interests that occupy me and are an excellent opportunity to experiment publicly with concepts and materials that come from other fields: chromatic, formal or technical ideas that come from readings, films, music, exhibitions, trips, etc. In turn, images inspired by these texts end up mixing in pictures, serigraphs, books, notebooks, zines and the countless other things I produce. I exhibited prints of these drawings in Buenos Aires, Rio, LA and Shanghai.
To the authors who write the texts I illustrate and to the publishers who publish them: thank you! They enrich my life immensely. I feel a kind bond with them. We maintain a dialogue that is printed every week.
KALIL LLAMAZARES (Buenos Aires, 1971) is a visual artist. He studied Graphic Design at the UBA. He worked in advertising, graphics, cinema, TV, books, magazines and other media. He currently illustrates the column of Francis Mallmann in the Sunday magazine of the newspaper La Nación.
© Images Kalil LLamazares/ La Nación Revista
