The Second World War was a deadly, apocalyptic conflict that turned contemporary history upside-down. It remains part of our recent past, and still seems to project itself into our present. After this global war, the Holocaust and the atomic bomb, humanity was in crisis. In some cases, such as that of Spain, suffering and oppression became entrenched. Generally speaking, the horror, seen or imagined, experienced individually or collectively, manifested itself traumatically. As the influence of existentialist philosophy spread, art addressed these concerns, focusing particularly on the human condition, whatever its peculiarities or the different avant-garde currents and styles applied. Figuration (often bordering on abstraction) took up the challenge of representing the figure, of presenting the image of a humanity that is wounded, anguished, destroyed or reinvented, and germinal. Whether or not history has repeated itself since those days, the questions and the moral and existential unease that those artists captured seem to be relevant once more today.

Some artists approached the figure of the victim from an anti-monumental attitude. They highlighted the anonymous, defenceless civilian who suffers aggression. The tortured body and the annihilated individual form a counterpoint to the rhetoric of the hero and of power. As in Anton Prinner’s Shaven-Headed Çwomen, serenity and pain converge, the fact that their travails are recorded having the effect of elevating their humiliation and vindicating their dignity.

The horror caused by all this cruelty generated disturbing images (that is to say, icons) of monstrous, grotesque, disgusting humanity, recreating its sickening perversity. In contrast, the desperate humanist crisis of the postwar period also led to the emergence of a tragic religiousness that eschewed traditional pomp and ceremony. The figure of the martyrdom of Christ was revived within the framework of a severe, tragic expressionism that acquired a certain timeless dimension.

Regarding the human condition, the idea and image of a full, serene, well-balanced humanity, seemed destined to oblivion. The dissolution of the body, its practical disappearance, was a symptom of a humanity wounded to the point of destruction. But, at practically the same time, whether in the context of the victory over fascism or moral and philosophical determination, the figure recovers and rises once more, often fragile, battered and beaten, to present itself once again as precarious potential, moving towards an uncertain but possible future.

Despite the progressive optimism that was taking hold in those societies that celebrated victory, and the economic growth in Western countries, some countries and groups found themselves in a prolonged situation of precariousness and oppression. Exile and survival generated feelings of melancholy otherness, of split identities. The era and the revolts of the existentialists are imbued with a deep sense of solitude. The losers in the Spanish Civil War were haunted by banishment and despair in a tormented, suffocating period that meted out the worst punishment to the working classes and women.

The idea of reviving a humanity oriented towards happiness, harmony and justice was not abandoned, but this could not be achieved through stereotypes of progress. Radical avant-garde artists such as Miró, as well as other, more marginal practitioners, suggested the possibility of a poetic optimism based on vigorous, archaic primitivism. This is the evocation of a new innocence. In the reconstruction of an optimism that stems not from politics but from the survival instinct, maternity can appear as a metaphor for vitality.