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From October 8, 2025, to January 11, 2026
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.
Mass media culture played a significant role in popularising the image of Adolf Hitler, who became one of the most recognisable faces in 20th-century history. Despite being an acknowledged genocidal figure and central to one of the darkest chapters in human history, efforts to portray him as a despot did not prevent his image from gaining huge traction. Even in his own time, he became one of the most frequently depicted figures by artists.
The illustrators make no attempt to hide their animosity towards a man they depict as a heartless, amoral caricature. In doing so, they risk fulfilling the prophecy outlined by philosopher Hannah Arendt, unintentionally contributing to the banalisation of evil and its chief perpetrator. In this sense, all the cartoonists anticipate a question that remains profoundly relevant today: whether humour should or should not cross certain boundaries, and to what extent it is legitimate to turn a tyrant, responsible for the deaths of so many, into one of the most iconic figures of the 20th century.
Wilhelm II of Germany, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, was one of the most frequently illustrated figures in the period leading up to and during the Great War. Many of the cartoons exploit the kaiser’s most caricaturable facial features, portraying him as a man driven by an insatiable lust for power who pursued a policy of territorial expansion and led the German offensive.
However, most depictions turn him into a grotesque figure. He became an easy target for artists eager to ridicule both his affected manner, emphasised through his heavily waxed moustache, and his militaristic behaviour, conveyed through the Prussian officer’s uniform and spiked steel helmet.
