This publication is the fascinating diary of Alvar Gonzáles-Palacios, the intellectual, art historian and great international expert on the decorative arts.
Alvar González-Palacios is a symbolic figure in the history of art: as an art historian and above all an expert in the decorative arts of the ancient world, and as a sophisticated intellectual and man of the world. On the occasion marking his seventieth birthday, he offers the public this rich and pithy autobiographical text drafted throughout 2006.
The "minimal" diary of Alvar González-Palacios is a faithful account of thoughts, sensations and encounters which dotted his seventieth year, but above all it is a practical, incisive and witty revisitation of an entire life dedicated to the history of art and, tout court, the history of taste through cameos of figures and personalities, including writers, intellectuals, art historians and critics, but also symbolic figures of the international "jet set": images, events and reflections told with humour and sophistication and seen through a careful, critical and yet affectionate eye, a view that took in great changes in taste and the transformation of the world.
A citizen of ancient Rome had this engraved on his tomb: "I planted six thousand olive trees". Every person has the right to contain the essence of his or her life in a phrase: six thousand olive trees, six thousand words. Alvar Gonzáles Palacios