It will undoubtedly be one of those places that are now called "Instagrammable," attracting both the curious and art lovers alike. It's a design created for the street, weighing 200 kilos and standing 1,80 meters tall, giving it a rather human scale. Finished in fiberglass, it was conceived to be touched, looked at, felt, and photographed, according to Antonio Azzato.
The "Llanes Menina" was unveiled in the port of Llanes to mark the 28th Llanes Town Hall Tourism Awards. Before its current location, it was exhibited in Madrid as part of the "Meninas Art Gallery" exhibition , a street art show that celebrated its fifth edition, specifically at the corner of Lagasca and Jorge Juan streets in the Spanish capital.
The Velázquez-style "menina," dressed in the traditional Llanes attire—with her richly embroidered and adorned bodice featuring raised flowers, her full skirt with its corresponding pleats, and an apron matching her headscarf—gazes out at the Cantabrian Sea from the north bank of the bridge over the Carrocedo River. It is, without a doubt, a beautiful reinterpretation of Velázquez's famous work, whose central theme is the portrait of the Infanta Margarita Teresa of Austria, who, placed in the foreground, is surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, "las meninas."
To learn more about the author of the work, we must mention Antonio Azzato Sordo's Llanes roots; he is the son of an Italian father and a mother from Porrua . He defines himself as self-taught and says that his artistic connection was forged in his father's furniture workshop.
Text: © Ramón Molleda for asturias.com
