The exhibition features the historic artist’s book L’odeur de la sainteté by Antonio Saura, with texts by Fernando Arrabal.

Published in Paris in 1975, the work emerged from Saura’s reinterpretation of a collection of anticlerical erotic photographs belonging to Yves Rivière, the publication’s editor and Rocío Santa Cruz’s master printer.

The publication, which forms part of Rocío Santa Cruz’s collection of artist’s books, is considered one of the most incisive and significant works in Saura’s graphic oeuvre. The edition consists of 125 copies, each accompanied by six original etchings, as well as a suite of thirteen etchings issued in an edition of eighteen copies on Chinese paper.

The prints display the gestural and irreverent language characteristic of the artist, articulating a biting and transgressive critique of structures of religious authority. The ensemble highlights the publication’s powerful visual force, as well as the fertile dialogue between Antonio Saura’s imagery and Fernando Arrabal’s writing.