Opening of HIC SUNT LEONES Aquí están os Leóns by the artist Pablo Barreiro, this Wednesday 10th of April at 19.30 h. in the space NORMAL from the University of A Coruña.

At the entrance to the Park two lions guard the gate, two lions that the Naveira family copied from the originals in St. Peter's Basilica (Rome), made in Carrara marble by Antonio Canova (1757-1822) for the tomb of Pope Clement XIII (1759-1769). One represents the virtues of faith. The other, eternal life. [...] Hic sunt leones, said the Romans, "Here are the lions", the keepers of the secret event. After the Pasatiempo fell into decline in the 1970s, the lions were bought and taken to Asturias, where they now guard the entrance to the sanctuary of Covadonga.

Pablo Barreiro establishes a dialogue with the copy of the lions that travelled from Rome to Betanzos and from Betanzos to Covadonga, seeking an approximation to the Urbild, an archetypal figure that consolidates the idea of a world, the European world. In his work of action and reflection on the copy, making a copy of the copy, he reproduces with visionary intent parts of the lions as signs of a prototype around which the history of art began to gravitate, as Ernst Gombrich points out, defining the canonical sense of beauty....

Text by Roberto Abuín for the project HIC SUNT LEONES.