British Artists and the Spanish Civil War

Pallant House Gallery in Chichester is currently staging a superb exhibition on the response of British artists to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), under the title 'Conscience and Conflict'. There are paintings, drawings, posters, banners, photographs, leaflets, flyers, even a historic film sequence for which the sound has unfortunately been lost.

Many of the leading artists and movements of the 30s are represented, including Henry Moore, Quentin Bell, and the Surrealists, as well as many that I had not previously come across. The painting above, of a demonstration in Battersea in 1939 in support of the Spanish Republic, is by Clive Branson.

'Spanish Prisoner, 1939', Henry Moore

Picasso's iconic painting 'Guernica' was shown in London in 1938, and several artists make reference to it in their own works. This exhibition includes a fabric collage re-working of the image, made collaboratively over a year or more in the course of a number of workshops held across the UK and elsewhere.

'Guernica', collaborative collage, 2013-4

Goya's 'Disasters of War' series was also shown in London in 1938, and some of the artists are clearly inspired by his images. A few of the Goya prints are on show here, and you can feel as well as see the influence.

"Bury them and shut up", Francisco Goya, 1810s

Amongst the historic exhibits are a couple of banners of the British Battalion of the International Brigades. The one shown below has been used for decades to drape the coffins at the funerals of old brigaders. The British Battalion was named after the Labour Party leader Clement Attlee, who became Prime Minister when a Labour Government was elected after the Second World War. The film shown in the exhibition has clips of Attlee welcoming brigaders at Victoria Station, on their return to the UK in 1938.

British Battalion banner, 1938

There was much on show that was new to me, including a series of paintings by Clive Branson of scenes in the nationalist prisoner-of-war camp where he was detained for several months in 1938. These are held by the Marx Memorial Library in London, but unfortunately I have not been able to find any examples online that I could link to here.

Alongside the major exhibition is a delightful show of a dozen prints by Terry Frost inspired by poems of Federico García Lorca. See A Match Made in Colour on his website for   the effect Lorca's poetry had on him, and on his art.

Moon rising, Terry Frost, 1989

La luna asoma

Cuando sale la luna 

se pierden las campanas 

y aparecen las sendas 

impenetrables.

When the moon comes out

church bells are lost

and impenetrable paths

appear

And finally, a nice surprise for me in the gallery's permanent exhibition - a few paintings of scenes in Spain by the East End Jewish artist David Bomberg, including this one of the bridge over the gorge at Ronda in Andalucía, where he lived for a year in the 1930s, not long before the outbreak of the Civil War.

Bridge at Ronda, David Bomberg, 1935

There's a dozen of his Spanish paintings in this series on the BBC's 'Your Paintings' site.

The exhibition runs until 15 February, and is possibly transferring to Newcastle later in the year, but is unlikely to be shown anywhere else as many of the items are on loan from other galleries and individuals, and will have to be returned. So if you're within reach of Chichester, get there if you can! 

Sierra de Teruel

The highlight of the Cinema and the Spanish Civil War season at the BFI has to be the showing of Sierra de Teruel. This portrait of Republican airmen at war was shot in Spain (mostly) by André Malraux in 1938-9; work on it continued in France during 1939 but it was caught by the Second World War and never completed. It has never been seen in this version in the UK until now. A version of the film has been shown under the title Espoir (also playing in the BFI season); however this one is Malraux's own version, smuggled out to Mexico after France fell and later deposited in the US Library of Congress, where it lay unregarded for 40-odd years.

It is performed with little rehearsal but a great deal of passion by a mostly amateur cast, and this gives it a raw, documentary feel. The film culminates in a magnificent 10-minute scene in which the villagers help bring the wounded - and dead - airmen down from a mountain-top crash; this scene is apparently much shortened - or even cut? - in the Espoir version.

Víctor Erice introduced the showing with an account of the film's genesis, and an analysis of the differences between the two versions. It was a very affecting talk, which he himself found difficult to deliver at times, in particular when, at the end, he referred to the film as "una elegía para la Segunda República Española" ("an elegy for the Spanish Republic"). After the film he showed two short extracts from his current project, one of which is his own filmic response to Sierra de Teruel.

I would very much like to see if it could be possible to arrange a showing of this film at the ACIS Conference this September.

Cinema and the Spanish Civil War

For those of you within reach of London, the British Film Institute is running a season of films dealing with the Spanish Civil War throughout the month of June 2009. The season was opened by Paul Preston (ACIS Honorary President). Paul also had a hand in the selection of films, which includes a range of documentaries and fiction films from Spain and elsewhere, made between 1936 and last year, several of which have not been seen in the UK before.

I've managed to get up for a couple of sessions so far. Last week I saw Canciones para después de una guerra (Songs for after a war), which, to my shame as an aficionado of cinema and popular music, I had not seen before. The film is not so much about the Civil War, as a commentary on the society that grew out of it. It's an amazing, fast-moving montage of images of life in Franco's Spain, still and movie, much of it from advertisements or official sources such as NoDo, and all accompanied by a barrage of popular songs of the period, some classics, some hilarious, some both.

The film gives a startling visual and aural impression of la España carpetovetónica - the retarded state in which Franco struggled to keep Spanish society for 40 years. I've got a very funny book* about this somewhere, a collection of cartoons and advertisements from the Spanish press of the 60s and 70s, which makes an interesting complement to the images and sounds of this film.

* Celtiberia Bis, by Luis Carandell (1974) - there's a blog in the same spirit at No recomendable, and an article by Carandell from El País: Y España era celtiberia.

La Retirada

Fort Bellegarde (P.O.)
Sat 9 Aug

A very affecting account in music, song and dance of the withdrawal across the frontier of tens of thousands of refugees during the last weeks of the Spanish Civil War (Jan - Mar 1939). Sandra Díaz has based the show on the experiences of her grandmother, Manolica - the poster they unravel at the end is something Sandra remembers her grandmother saying:

"No lloraremos, cantaremos"
(We shall not weep, we shall sing)

There are many reminders of this period in the area, from the paths the refugees took across the border, to the concentration camp at Rivesaltes and the grave of Antonio Machado at Collioure. This show is one of several manifestations of the drive for the "recovery of historical memory" that has been gathering strength in both France and Spain in recent years.

[links and more pics to come]