Il dolce far niente

Manuel Marsol

Nothing has happened today. Nor today. Today either. See? Nothing ever happens here. Maybe a mosquito, but nothing else. The days are like pine trees. They all look the same.

Will be always like that?

The illustrations of this exhibition belong to the picture book The Time of the giant (O tempo do gigante, Orfeu Negro, Portugal; El tiempo del gigante, Fulgencio Pimentel, Spain) illustrated by Manuel Marsol and co-written with Carmen Chica.

Manuel Marsol

Il dolce far niente

*First prize from the V Catálogo Iberoamericano de Ilustración, Guadalajara-Mexico book fair 2014

*National AMADORA BD award for best foreign illustrator of a children’s album in Portugal 2015

Il dolce fan niente or the pleasure of doing nothing is an expression of ancient Rome that encourages us to enjoy life through small pleasures.

As time passes, the practice of il dolce far niente has been fading away from our lives.

Optimizing time seems to be the only choice, and for this desire we suffer so much when we are not doing any activity.

This exhibition invite us to stop, to look at the details, to capture the moment when a cloud takes the shape of a whale.

El tiempo del gigante is a book about the passage of time. Silent, outwardly; inane, outwardly; devious, vibrant and majestic, the world speaks to our ears and life pulsates around us with its infinite variety. Absorbing, elusive and hypnotic, this book awakes in the child the certainty that they have felt something similar. Children and adults are invited to remember that there is a mystery hidden behind the most insignificant hours of the day; this mystery has no name but it within our reach and is an infinite source of wonder. (Fulgencio Pimentel)

Biography Manuel