BIG Gran. Enrique Gran’s three passions were painting, women and little green men. Gran of Spain, a painter of other worlds and other times, author of a surprising work that awakens feelings of melancholy, genius of solitude, magnificent in its contrasts, mischievous and with a wonderful and magical way of seeing life through a look of rare subtlety. Santander, 2014

It is Begoña Merino Gran who reads, but the phrases  are not hers, but have been left in writing by hundreds of people who have visited the latest exhibitions of the creator from Santander. Fifteen years after his tragic death, five years since the Foundation that bears his name was born, the memory of the great Gran is still alive and well, the poet of the brushes, one of the most brilliant and personal authors of the 20th century, the utopian painter of abstraction who found it so hard to leave his paintings. The high attendance at yesterday’s event at the Museo de Bellas Artes confirms this.