OUT OF MY HEAD The Imaginary Creatures of Josep Baqué

The incredible story of a World War II-era police officer in Barcelona, Spain…In his private time he created 1500 imaginary creatures and told not a soul about them. In this first-ever critical biography of Baqué, art historian Brian Chidester reflects on the artist and his creation through the prism of 20th century art, the Franco dictatorship in Spain (1939–75), and the few correlative records in Baqué's personal archive. Yet the book doubles as a manual of sorts on the creative process, and most fascinatingly, speaks to the deeper role the imagination plays in overcoming oppression through wonder. With three full color creations per page (and in this unique oblong format), you are treated to a positively incredible menagerie of strange, bizarre creations. They sometimes remind me of Sidney Sime's work from 60 years previous, and then of underground comix some 25 to 35 years later. "Josep Baqué was born in Barcelona in the late19th century. He was a municipal police officer and during his lifetime never declared himself as an artist. Since early 1930s and for the following decades he produced more than 1500 drawings of  'monsters, wonders and rare events' made in ink and gouache on paper, some embellished with gold and silver. He created army of imaginary creatures, strange and unusual, mixing human and animal traits or characteristics of different types (cats, primitive men, bats and insects, giant spiders, snakes, snails, octopus, cuttlefish, seafood, fowl, fish...) "Baqué died in 1967 and left his niece, his sole heir, his fantastic bestiary isolated away from light for nearly 40 years. In 2007, the famous College of Pataphysics organized an exhibition of 160 monsters and published a lengthy article in the journal of pataphysicians Viridis Candela." - quote source unknown