Francesca Poza’s work is always the end result of a duality that moves outwards and inwards at the same time. The gesture that gives shape to her art is not limited to aesthetic creation because also involves a transformation of intimate space. In this way, the external and the internal mirror and influence one another in an ongoing process, imbuing her work with a hybrid quality.

The interaction that comes into being on this delicate poetic boundary is, at the same time, completely fearless. Francesca uses paper as her basic working material and thread as a core symbol. The thread is more than a physical element: it represents an epiphany and a metaphor for the fragility inherent to all existence. As it intertwines, the thread gains in strength and takes on a dense, resilient texture, similar to what happens with words and texts. The subtlety of the thread gives it the ability to organize concepts such as time, connection, continuity and the rhythm of literary fragments that do not necessarily have to be read aloud.

Spinning, intertwining, wrapping and assembling the pieces becomes a cyclical movement underwritten by a constant play of communication. In this context, each creative act is not only an expression directed outwards, but also an exploration and redefinition of what is inside us. In the artist’s own words:“I tend towards abstraction in my work. Though I never completely abandon figurative elements, I create textures and depths. What I wish to do is reproduce and portray what is organic, to create new forms from which the natural world disintegrates into a profound intimate representation of its structure. The work reflects movement, silhouette and contours, representing the figure through curves, forms, texture and depth. My practice has pushed me to continue exploring what can be recycled. I am drawn to the idea of creating art from almost nothing, offering my personal vision by recycling and recovering books. I create light and volume with paper, visually connecting different spatial levels in handmade books. Working with various kinds of paper to achieve volume.”

Castilla makes reference to Castilla, lo castellano y los castellanos, the book in which Miguel Delibes portrays everyday life in the small towns of Castile in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Here, in this work, Francesca endeavoured to reflect Delibes’s style of writing, deeply rooted in the Castilian landscape, by exploring themes such as migration, rural villages, the countryside, the faint breeze and the subdued tones of its wheat fields. Each page of Delibes’s book is simply and naturally suffused with a popular, rural discourse. His writing faithfully renders the language used in Castile during that period, laying bare a way of being and of behaving that has defined the Castilian people for centuries.

This work by Francesca Poza entered the BBVA Collection in 2024 thanks to the BBVA Acquisition Award at the 13th FIG Bilbao held annually at Palacio Euskalduna. The primary goal of this specialized art fair is to promote printmaking and work on paper, not just modern and contemporary but also from all eras.