Manuel Marsol in conversation with Andrés Ocadiz y Paulina Oropeza

Manuel Marsol’s (Spain) father passed away when he was just 11 years old. This event has left its mark on the work of this illustrator, who expresses his affection for his father through memories and through fantasy. He did so in the illustrated book Astro, an allegory about the love between a father and a son, told through the story of a stranded astronaut who finds himself on a distant planet under the care of an alien. And he has done so once again in El cielo en una estancia, where a photograph of a penalty kick taken by his father in 1970—capturing the ball suspended in mid-air, leaving us forever unable to know whether it ended in a goal—becomes the starting point for an exploration of childhood memory: a song, a few films, the penalty Roberto Baggio famously blasted over the bar, unanswered questions, and spheres spinning through space for eternity.