Karin Leiz was the creator of one of the most emblematic images in the history of advertising in Spain: the Freixenet bubbles, long-legged girls who emulated the spark that is in each bottle of cava. The campaign was launched for Christmas, starring a world star of music or cinema. It was carried out by Studio Pomés, directed by the photographer Leopoldo Pomés, Karin’s husband.
“I was a golden bubble,” Karin recalls, but only to test the idea because she’s always felt better behind the camera than in front of it. The idea worked and Leopoldo made it grow. There would not be a single bubble, but a whole chorus of girls, the cava turned into music hall sap.
Karin’s parents were Germans who came to Spain fleeing the First World War. They settled in Barcelona, ??survived the Civil War in Seville, where Karin was born, and followed the Second World War in Germany with anguish from a Barcelona under the influence of autarky. It was not easy.
The first years at Studio Pomés were not easy either. Advertising photography was in its infancy. It was hard to earn money. Karin was helped by her Protestant upbringing and the post-war experience, when nothing was thrown away and everything was used.
Just as she dressed as a bubble or posed as a photographer to decorate the walls of the Flash Flash restaurant, she swept the studio and searched the streets for models for the campaigns.
Before dedicating himself to advertising, he studied Pedagogy. “I wanted to find ways of teaching that were closer to the student, while still respecting the teachers,” she explains. “He who teaches must preserve a moral authority” that he, in his opinion, he does not have today.
She learned to cook when she got married and has ended up publishing two cookbooks: 1,460 recipes to enjoy vegetables all year round and Cocinar con Hierbas, both in the Debate publishing house. “I wrote them thinking that you have to take advantage of everything,” she explains.
The use as a motor of culinary creativity is also a consequence of his Protestant upbringing. As it is that every night, at 85 years old, she makes a list of the things that he will do the next day. “You have to be useful every minute of your life,” she says.
This utility, however, understands it as an accumulation of fun rather than tasks. At this point in his life, he is sure if he completes four of the ten tasks that he sets for himself daily. It’s enough. With this method he confesses that “I never get bored”.
His favorite occupation is the garden of his house in the Empordà, a space where vegetation grows as if it were free. “I have created a garden so that he is comfortable with himself.” It is a confession and a principle that says a lot about his way of facing life. She has always done it with generosity and optimism.
With this lesson on well-being, Giardinetto Sessions goes on vacation. We return in September. Happy summer.
