A Master of Metaphor

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JAVIER JEAN BENAVIDES IS A SPANISH ILLUSTRATOR who I have reported on in the past. Javier is a master of metaphor who continues to inspire me with his ability to bring new meaning by the pairing of ordinary objects. The genius of what he does is how he sees. This man sees beauty in the mundane and poetry in their form. In the past I compared Javier Jaén Benavides vision to that of the great Saul Steinberg. I still believe that.

See the earlier post here.

See Javier’s web site here.

A Steinbergian Transfomation

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MY DEAR FRIEND LIZ SENT ME A LINK TO A BLOG OUT OF BARCELONA, SPAIN. She often sends me tidbits of intriguing things - just to share. This time, it was just a link—no message, nothing but the link. I mean, if it comes from Liz, I was intrigued. I went to it and was delighted in what I found.

These simple bird constructions, from found leaves, were my favorite from many interesting posts. I don’t know. Maybe they fall into the “cute” category of which I am not a fan. But my instinct says these are something far deeper than that. To me, these birds (created from leaves) are great transformative metaphors built with deceptively simple touches by the human hand.... much like the masterwork of Saul Steinberg (1914 - 1999). In these examples, by artist Javier Jaén Benavides, the only added feature was the cut out human eyes from magazines.

Absolutely Steinbergian!