Excerpts from BBC 2017
The story of a painting that fought fascism -
(published for a 2017 Art Show in London England)
Opening during the Spanish Civil War, the 1937 Paris Exhibition allowed
artists to speak out against brutality. Fiona Macdonald looks at a moment
when paintings became propaganda.
On 26 April 1937, Nazi German and Italian bombers attacked the Basque
city of Guernica. Over the course of three hours, they destroyed three-quarters
of the ancient town, killing and wounding hundreds. The raid was “unparalleled
in military history”, according to reports at the time – and it inspired one of the
most famous anti-war paintings in history. A new exhibition staged in London
by Barcelona’s Mayoral Gallery honours a group of artists who responded to
the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War.
These artists were brought together by the 1937 Paris Exhibition, which
opened less than a month after the bombing and just 10 months after the
Civil War began. The Exhibition is usually remembered for the competing
bluster of two nations: Germany, with its monumental granite tower topped
with a giant eagle and swastika, and the Soviet Union, whose marble-clad
structure was capped by an even bigger statue of two figures clutching a
hammer and a sickle. Yet it also played host to a humbler project that has
outlasted either monolith. Mayoral’s exhibition commemorates the 80th
anniversary of the Spanish pavilion, seen by the Second Spanish Republic
as a way of revealing General Franco’s cruelty to the rest of the world
against a backdrop of rising authoritarianism.
Its ambitions were far removed from Nazi and Soviet architectural
one-upmanship. As Europe moved towards war, the situation in Spain took
on significance around the world. It became a battleground for the forces of
Fascism and Communism and inspired new works from some of the greatest
artists of the time. Pablo Picasso, Julio González, Joan Miró,
Alexander Calder, Alberto Sánchez, and José Gutiérrez Solan were all
shown in the Spanish pavilion.
