In the summer of 1914, Santiago Rusiñol began writing in the Glosari column published in L’Esquella de la Torratxa a series of articles under the title Sparks of the War. In these contributions, he did not hesitate to take sides in favor of France, which he identified as the highest expression of European art and civilization in the face of the threat of German expansionism.

This exhibition, made up of a selection of around seventy drawings from the collection of the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Museu Nacional, highlights the heritage value of the finest public Catalan collection of works on paper. At the same time, it helps us understand how the cartoons and caricatures that illustrated periodicals during the time of the Great War served as a form of catharsis—both for the artists and for readers who turned to them as a way of overcoming the fears and uncertainties brought on by the outbreak of an international conflict that had reached their very doorstep.