Casa Árabe and Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo have organized the presentation of the book Cairo Blues, by Pino Creanza, in an event which will also include the participation of Bárbara Azaola, an Arabist, professor and researcher, and Egyptian filmmaker Basel Ramsis. The event is taking place at 7:00 p.m. at the Casa Árabe auditorium in Madrid (at Calle Alcalá, 62) and is presented by Nuria Medina, coordinator of the Casa Árabe’s Area of Culture and New Media. 

Pino Creanza himself defines Cairo Blues as a graphic report through which he intends to “tell the complex, multi-faceted reality of Egypt, fleeing from simplifications into the normal categories used by the media.” Through this work, we visit both emblematic locations in Cairo and environments which usually go unnoticed by tourists, all thanks to the pencil of the artist and pen of a chronicler who uses the popular uprisings which ended with the downfall of Mubarak to provide a backbone for his storyline. 

Cairo Blues is the first work published in the collection “Azulejos” (“Tiles”), a new project by the Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo.

Pino Creanza (Altamura, 1958) was educated as an engineer and combines his work in the field of technological research with his graphic creations and stories. He collaborates with magazines such as 

Frigidaire, ANIMALs, the special XL edition of Repubblica, in which his characters have become popular, including Professor Knox, Gino and Sberla, and Tom & Ponsi. He is the author of a text titled El olivo desaparecido (The Disappeared Olive), illustrated by Patrizia Comino and published at the Fasidiluna publishing firm, where he is the director of the collection “Los volantines.” For Pino Creanza, “the true essence of comics is poetry,” and about his self-taught training, he adds, “I do not have an education in art. I never went to courses or drawing schools, but I have always been surrounded by images, pencils, paintbrushes and colors. There is a visual form of thought, a cognitive modality which acts synthetically, by analogies, associations, juxtapositions and compositional schemes, that is accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they are artists.”