El Persa: solo para amigos (El Persa: Only for Friends)

José Cardona El Persa (Valencia, 1943-2012) learned how to read and write without realising before he attended a piarist school. He then studied architecture with Alfonso Belmonte, who baptised him as El Persa, the pseudonym he would use from the age of eighteen. After working in various trades, the majority related to literature and drawings, in 1981 he established himself as a cut-out artist and an "eccentric self-publisher”, ventures which, among other things, he made compatible with riding La Condesa, a good and beautiful motorcycle.

El Persa: For Friends Only gathers a selection of interviews given by the author over the course of twenty years —some of them unpublished—, photographs borrowed from family albums, and an assorted repertoire of graphic documents, such as covers from publications and cut-outs. The book also contains testimonies of friends who knew him well and texts that reveal the multiple facets of El Persa, which, like a puzzle, complete the portrait of this artist and friend.

From El Persa, Media Vaca has published the books The Unknown El Persa (Last Readings collection, no. 6) and From One to a Hundred (Big and Small collection, no. 10).