In 1936, the eruption of the Spanish Civil War forced thousands of Spaniards to flee their country, unsure if they ever could come back. Back home, the troops of Francisco Franco murdered tens of thousands and imposed conservative oppressive laws. Surrealist artists, usually preoccupied with one’s inner life, could no longer escape reality, so they reflected upon the tragedy in their works. Read on to learn more about the impact of the Spanish Civil War on Surrealist art.
Surrealism and the Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
To fully cover the origins of the Spanish Civil War, one should address the history of Spain. Talking about the events that directly preceded it, we should mention the deep social tension partially caused by the deteriorating economic conditions and rapid inflation. It was caused by the increased production and trade during World War I when Spain’s neutral status allowed the country to trade with all sides of the conflict. Thus, the rich owners of the lands and factories turned richer, and the working class became even more exhausted and lost some of its property, seized to increase production.
Inside the country, a constant conflict between conservatives and left-wing activists was augmented by regional issues. One of them was the desire for independence of the region of Catalonia, with its own language and capital in Barcelona. In 1934, Catalonia managed to obtain autonomy from Madrid, only to lose it in 1939. In July 1936, the brewing conflict entered its active phase as the leftist Republican government attempted to defeat the conservative fascist regime led by Francisco Franco, a monarchist known for his service in Spanish colonies in Morocco.
By some accounts, the Spanish Civil War was one of the bloodiest non-global conflicts in European history, with the number of killed approaching half a million people. By March 1939, Franco’s forces captured Barcelona and entered Madrid victoriously. The regime would last for almost forty years, collapsing only in 1975 with Franco’s death.
In the climate of a war between citizens of the same country, members of the same families, and inhabitants of the same cities, artists and writers kept working on and expressing their collective trauma. Some, like the famous writer George Orwell, took up arms to help the Republican cause. Obviously, a great impact was caused on Spanish creatives. Many of them had to flee the country and abandon their homes, fearing for their lives. Many of those artists were Surrealists—members of the new and provocative art movement that dived deep into the disturbed human mind.
Spanish Artists in Exile: Quest for Identity During the War
And there was certainly enough to dive into, in the minds of Spanish exiled artists, unwanted by their home and seeking refuge in a foreign land. Many of them moved to France and found themselves at the center of the developed Surrealist community. Their fears and frustrations soon found their way onto their canvases, although the path was hardly easy. For instance, Remedios Varo and Esteban Frances were among those who settled in Paris in 1937, narrowly escaping the upcoming turmoil. In 1939, Franco closed off the Spanish borders for all Spaniards with Republican ties, thus making the return home not only dangerous but physically impossible. To survive, they had to take odd jobs and almost starve. Later, Varo confessed that she used to paint forgeries of Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings to make ends meet.
One of the most prolific Surrealists of the time was the Catalan artist Joan Miro. Miro’s national identity has always been a strong current in his works but revealed itself in a new light. In his wartime works, he represented Catalan peasants fleeing their homes and landscapes ravaged by war. Yet, his most famous work of the period, Still Life with Old Shoe, seemed widely disconnected from the events unfolding in the country from the point of its subject matter. Yet, the distorted form and radical color demonstrate the overwhelming anxiety and terror that filled the air and poisoned even the most peaceful of daily activities.
Artists for Political Propaganda
As an art movement, Surrealism was slightly detached from immediate political action, usually preferring to theorize and imagine. However, after the immediate threat became too obvious to ignore, the artists started to invent ways of political engagement and expression. Surrealist art was based on individual creative expression and symbols open to interpretation within one’s mind. Thus, it was nearly useless for political purposes, with the semi-conscious wandering of the mind standing in the way of clear and direct communication.
In 1937, the Republican government of Spain presented its national pavilion at the International World Fair in Paris. The key aim of the project was to attract more support for the Republican cause and force other countries into action. Apart from documentary chronicles of Francoist atrocities, the pavilion presented works by famous Spanish artists, including Joan Miro. Concerned for the readability of his message, Miro decided to divide the personal emotional impressions and political calls engagement.
Instead of dramatic and nauseating works similar to Still Life with Old Shoe, he presented a monumental mural titled The Reaper, which was later reworked into a propaganda poster. There was little to no Surrealist sophistication left in this work. The Reaper was a symbolic representation of a Catalan peasant, appealing to the most basic of feelings and emotions through crude forms. Radical hysterical color and distorted shape channeled terror and a sense of urgency, as well as gave the impression that the Spanish Republicans were united against their oppressor. The truth, however, was not so hopeful: numerous left-wing factions could not agree on their ideologies while Franco’s forces inevitably progressed.
Discussing the influence of the Spanish Civil War on Surrealist painting, it would be unfair not to include the most famous artwork related to the conflict. Although Pablo Picasso had relatively brief associations with Surrealism, his work Guernica demonstrated a similar style and conceptual approach. Figures of soldiers, screaming civilians, and horrified horses mixed into a chaotic scene of paint, violence, and bloodshed, even though the painting was almost monochrome.
Contrary to its popularized title, the painting represented not the bombing of Guernica but the events in Malaga, Picasso’s hometown, and Madrid. Picasso was already working on the painting for the Spanish Republican Pavilion when he was approached by Louis Aragon. At the time, the Guernica bombing was still recent and widely discussed in the press, so Aragon offered to rename the work to achieve maximal emotional effect. The cruelty and the meaninglessness of the Guernica bombing shocked the entire world, with this effect only reinforced by Picasso’s work.
Salvador Dali: Franco’s Supporter or a Misunderstood Conceptualist?
The most famous Spanish Surrealist, Salvador Dali, achieved a highly controversial reputation during both the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Dali’s colleagues, mostly left-wing activists, noticed his disturbingly intensive obsession with oppressive regimes and fascist symbolism. Soon after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Dali started to incorporate the swastika in his works, infuriating antifascist Surrealists and their leader, Andre Breton.
Later he claimed that his use of nazi imagery expressed his theoretical interest in the phenomenon of fascism. Whatever his real motivation was, Dali met the beginning of the Spanish Civil War with the same terror as everyone else. Although he at first avoided any public commentary, his paintings of the period demonstrated the artist’s inner turmoil. There, scenes of sexual perversions turned into symbols of violence and chaos, fear-filled spaces like poisonous gas, and colors evoked associations with decomposition and gore.
Dali’s political peculiarities had cost him many close friends but, strangely, barely affected his career. In his student years in Madrid, he developed a remarkably close friendship with Luis Buñuel, who would later become one of the most famous film directors in the world, and Federico Garcia Lorca, the future great poet. Together, Buñuel and Dali would shoot two iconic Surrealist films, both equally scandalous and influential: An Andalusian Dog and The Golden Age.
Surrealism’s Rift: The Diverging Paths and Tragic Endings
In the 1930s, the group members distanced themselves from each other and became preoccupied with personal projects. The unfolding civil war radically changed the tone of their relationship. While Dali chose to abstain from commentary, Luis Buñuel worked for the Republican government, filming documentaries. He even engaged in espionage. In 1936, Lorca was murdered by the Francoist militia, most likely because of his homosexuality and socialist ties. The reunion of the two remaining friends almost happened in the late 1930s when they both found themselves in New York. Then, Dali already turned into the celebrity king of popular Surrealism, endorsed by critics, collectors, and his wife-manager Gala. Buñuel came to New York broke, with his family and children dependent on him. Asking Dali for help, Buñuel received not only a poorly worded rejection but a lecture praising the dictator responsible for the death of Lorca and Buñuel’s exile.
