mutis
N U E V A G R A N A D A
THE NEW WORLD
JOSE CELESTINO MUTIS
AND THE REAL BOTANICAL EXPEDICION
Botanist, but also mathematician and doctor, Celestino Mutis remained in history for his monumental "Flora de la Real Expedicion Botanica del Reino de Nueva Granada, an immense and complete compendium of the flora of present-day Colombia and Venezuela. So impressive, more than 6000 illustrations, that the Spanish government, for a long time did not have the funds to publish it.
The beautiful illustrations of this herbarium were a source of inspiration for this project, which therefore chose to honor this scientist, choosing his surname as a determining part of the brand name.
A pupil of Linnaeus, Mutis, who moved to Central America in 1761, is responsible for the creation of the first botanical gardens in Nueva Granada, anticipating the ideology of the conservation of natural species by centuries.
THE NEW GRENADE
The term Nueva Granada defines a vast region, which includes present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Guayana, Ecuador, and parts of Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Peru.
The capital of Nueva Granada was Bogotà, but the vastness of the territory and its lively morphology, which made travel and communications difficult, led to the creation of other centers of power, such as Quito and Caracas. The territory of Nueva Granada was a source of enormous wealth for the European conquerors, which were systematically plundered. For the Indians, however, the arrival of Europeans was the cause of epidemics, wars, political and cultural annihilation. However, beautiful vestiges of this difficult historical encounter remain: colonial baroque cities with a languid atmosphere, where European architecture lights up with vivid colors and carved stone acquires new roundness and unprecedented shapes. However, the splendor of nature reigns over everything, then uncontaminated and threatening, mother of an inconceivable biodiversity for the European standard. A wealth, now threatened, which is the patrimony of the whole world and which the Indians have protected and respected for millennia.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
AND MAGICAL REALISM
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Gabo, is one of the most famous writers in the world. Colombian, main exponent of the literary current of Magic Realism, in his novels, in which reality and allegory, legend and history, blend seamlessly, the territory of Nueva Granada is described with pages of incredible intensity. He celebrates his descriptions of Cartagena, the nature of Colombia, its skies and its extreme weather events.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, his most famous work, was elected the second literary work in Spanish, second only to Don Quixote.
The fragrances of Mutis Nueva Granada are permeated with these atmospheres, suspended between myth and reality. Their intense jus, with their sensual and often erotic charge, are olfactory transpositions of this world, suspended in time, in which spaces become immense, times slower and reason succumbs to sentiment.