The exhibition José Segrelles, el ilustrador fantástico (José Segrelles, the Fantastic Illustrator), organised by the Consorcio de Museos de la Comunidad Valenciana and curated by José Enrique Segrelles, offers an overview of the career of one of the most internationally renowned Spanish illustrators during the opening decades of the twentieth century. Through a representative selection of his graphic work and paintings, the exhibition highlights the artist’s unique ability to create visual worlds with great narrative intensity in which he fused imagination, symbolism and literature. The exhibition walkthrough also enables a reassessment of Segrelles’s influence on the development of contemporary fantasy illustration and the recognition of his work by leading figures from the worlds of art and film.

Caronte. Canto II de la Divina Comedia (Charon. Canto II of the Divine Comedy) (c. 1929), from the BBVA Collection, is a pivotal work in the exhibition discourse, as one of the most significant examples of José Segrelles’s work as an illustrator. Part of the series of watercolours he produced to illustrate Dante’s work, it readily evinces the artist’s extraordinary ability to give visual form to some of the most evocative episodes in world literature. The disturbing depiction of Charon, conceived as a hybrid being somewhere between the human and the fantastic, brings together some of the most characteristic features of Segrelles’s creative imagination: an exaltation of the sublime, a dreamlike atmosphere and an evocation of the supernatural. The expressiveness of the figure, combined with the carefully constructed composition and the evocative power of the image, transform the scene into a visual experience charged with great dramatic intensity. In this respect, the work exemplifies the narrative mastery and aesthetic sensitivity that define Segrelles’s oeuvre.