In the footsteps of One Hundred Years of Solitude’s Gabriel García Márquez in Colombia
See where García Márquez got the inspiration for magical realist novels including One Hundred Years of Solitude, now a Netflix miniseries
Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967 and now a Netflix miniseries, tells the story of the Buendía family and Macondo, the village they founded, over a period of 100 years.
It is a multilayered work in which true events from Colombian history are mixed with surreal and fantastical events. The novel is considered a prime example of the magical realist literary style.
If you want to understand García Márquez, you need to get to know the people, their attitude to life, the traditions, the symbols and the culture in his home area, in particular Aracataca, where he was born on March 6, 1927, and where he spent his childhood, says Melquín Merchán.
Merchán, a 27-year-old artist from Aracataca, has his paintings on display in a museum in the former telegraph office, where García Márquez’s father used to work. Some of his artworks were inspired by scenes and characters from One Hundred Years of Solitude.
“I try to paint like [he] wrote. His narrative style, the constant mixing of the real and the surreal, it’s very similar to the stories our grandparents told us,” Merchán says.
