Propaganda, photojournalism and cinema
Faced with the need to communicate to the world the drama of war, and to coordinate the internal and external dissemination of the image of the anti-fascist struggle, republican institutions set up propaganda systems with artists committed to legitimate government. To a lesser extent, the Francoist side also used posters as a vehicle for propaganda and counter-information, thus establishing a dialectic of forces. It was not a war of arms, but a battle to raise awareness among the population.
For this reason, propaganda and photojournalism are also two thematic axes addressed in the new presentation. On the one hand, the section devoted to posters, with emblematic images that have transcended the historical moment in which they were created. On the other, the section devoted to photojournalism, which became extraordinarily important during the Civil War, includes works by photographers such as Agustí Centelles, Antoni Campañà and Josep Compte, and the iconic photomontage by Pere Català Pic Aplastemos el fascismo (Let's Crush Fascism). The space dedicated to cinema is also renewed with the showing of new films, in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya. The film Le Martyre de la Catalogne [Martyr Catalonia] is added, showing the effects of the bombings on the civilian population. Also included are images from a film of the Revolutionary Movement, showing images of the corpses of the nuns of the Salesas convent that were exhibited during the early stages of the Civil War.
Encounter of a militiawoman with death, Pere Pruna, c. 1936-1939 |
The symbiosis between art and war had one of its main manifestations in the form of poster art. Although political commitment was made explicit through various artistic registers, none of them had the transmission capacity of the poster as a manifestation of popular art on walls. The poster combines its condition of ephemeral creation with a notable aesthetic display, with dramatic chromatisms in search of an immediate impact. Both the Francoist and Republican sides published all kinds of posters, in what was a translation of the war into the field of propaganda, conveying confrontational political slogans. Several well-known artists, including avant-garde ones, produced posters that have become, in some cases, emblematic images that have transcended the historical moment in which they were created.
Josep Renau. Hoy mas que nunca, victoria, 1938. Private collection on deposit at the museum, 2014 © Fundació Josep Renau - Valencia
The Spanish Civil War contributed decisively to the consolidation of photojournalism, a journalistic genre that had burgeoned in the 1920s thanks to the invention of the Leica -a handy camera that allowed the photographer to capture the news "at the foot of the barrel"- and the proliferation of large-circulation illustrated magazines, which reserved entire pages for photographically unfolding the story of the news, almost like a film script. Photographers such as Agustí Centelles and Antoni Campañà supplied abundant graphic material for the main illustrated publications of the time, both national and foreign, which, as the conflict progressed, gave increasing importance and space to the images of destruction and death caused by the indiscriminate air raids on the civilian population.
Rifleman [Vicente Burón], Antoni Campañà, 1936. Loan of the Campañà Capella family, 2020 |
Exhibition of the mummies of the nuns, Salesas convent. Passeig de Sant Joan, Barcelona, July 1936. Antoni Campañà. Campañà Archive |