A journey through the history of life in a selection of a hundred movable and pop-up books, some of them more than a hundred years old.
The oldest known books featuring mechanical devices are linked to science, specifically to astronomy and anatomy. These were the first fields for which the possibilities of origami were explored as a way of giving volume, movement and depth to the flat images in books.
The exhibition ‘Pàgines Vives’ (Living pages) features a selection of 80 examples, grouped into 13 chapters designed to form an evolutionary journey through life on our planet. Beginning with the Universe, the show then goes on to explore the Earth and all animal species, from insects to mammals, before finally ending with the human body and mind. The books come from the outstanding private collection built up by Ana Maria Ortega and Alvaro Palacios Gutiérrez Baños, who have amassed some 2,000 volumes over the last 20 years.
The books are accompanied by an audiovisual and information panels that tell us more about the history and the different types of these unconventional volumes, which are given many different names: fold-out, movable, living picture, animated, three-dimensional or pop-up books. Besides the writer and the illustrator, these creations are also signed by the paper engineer, who designs the paper-folding mechanisms necessary for the drawings to acquire movement and volume, from a simple flap concealing an image to incredible architectures in paper.
‘Pàgines vives’ invites the visitor to take a journey through the history of life as illustrated by pop-up scientific books from all periods, associated with the world of children today, but born centuries ago in close relations with science.