This print comes from Oceana, a portfolio launched in 1971 as part of Tiempo para la alegría, one of the earliest major collections of contemporary bibliography. Consisting of 48 titles that appeared between 1963 and 1983, the collection was conceived and edited by Rafael Díaz-Casariego as a testament to the graphic achievements of the great artists of the time. Each book comprised a selection of writings by outstanding figures of Spanish literature (with two exceptions: Edgar Allan Poe and Rainer M. Rilke), paired with prints and engravings made by important artists. The publication illustrated by José Caballero contains 14 colour lithographs, hand-printed directly on stone, engaging in dialogue with Pablo Neruda’s poetry.

Caballero and Neruda met in 1934, when Neruda arrived in Madrid as Chile’s consul. Federico García Lorca, a common friend, introduced them the day after Neruda’s arrival. Eleven years older than Caballero, Neruda became an artistic and intellectual mentor for him and for other artists who would maintain a strong interconnection from that moment onwards.

Their first creative collaborations appeared soon afterwards, and as early as 1935 the painter illustrated the first issue of Caballo verde para la poesía, a magazine founded and run by Neruda, who in the following year would commission Caballero with the illustration of his book Las Furias y las Penas, eventually never published due to the outbreak of the civil war. In later years they kept in contact through the exchange of letters, photos and drawings.

When Neruda returned to Europe, this time as Chilean Ambassador to France (1970), they met more often. Caballero travelled to Paris and, on those visits, they prepared the portfolio Oceana, which was printed in less than a year.

The hand-written dedication by Neruda to introduce the work shows the profound kinship between the two of them, commenting on Caballero’s style in that period: “I entrusted José Caballero with the design of my Oceana for infinitessential reasons pertaining to the two of us: to some extent we are systematic, organic contradictors of our time; either in poetry or in painting, either in ink or in dye, we both oppose the machinal core of the world and wish to anticipate the reign of the sun. My painter comrade placed discs made of clay, of oranges, over the creation of the universe: I placed rain and ocean, the Araucanian atmosphere, taciturn flashes of lightning over it. The truth of the matter is that here we complete each other, in this barcarolle of mine where hips and hair sing to take us away from the tarmac and crown us with marine and feminine depth.”