Giraldo, Carlos
Colombia, 1983
Carlos Giraldo has always struggled to integrate socially, ever since early childhood. He has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and spends as much as ten hours a day drawing in his room in the family apartment, located in a very poor neighbourhood of Bogota. Obsessed with order, he carefully archives all his productions, which he usually numbers and binds together to make books. He knows the exact number of drawings held in each one and he even keeps an “accounts book” in order to maintain an accurate inventory. Giraldo is fascinated by history and sciences and takes inspiration from documentary iconography, which he reproduces in his drawings with extraordinary precision. He strives to illustrate the subjects that fascinate him, such as the prophecies of Nostradamus, the Incas, Antiquity, the Second World War, and the Titanic. He draws mainly in graphite or marker pen on fine paper or tracing paper (which is his favourite support): he puts in the outlines on the recto, then colours them in on the verso.
