Art during the dark years

Franco’s victory in 1939 was a blow for Catalan art. Everything with an air of modernity about it was sidelined and the country had to abandon creative forms of expression that had made it a peripheral but relevant centre of the avant-garde in Europe.

However, art did not stop and nor did the will to recover the lost modernity. Yet, in the history of art this is often left out and the period is portrayed as a cultural desert until the irruption of the Dau al Set and Grup R in the 40s.

Now, a new generation of academics wants to overturn the preconceptions of this period that was “contradictory, complex and very rich, richer than has been said,” according to Bernat Puigdollers and Aleix Catasús, who have produced the book, Art i cultura de postguerra. Barcelona 1939-1962.

Despite the repression and the persecution, and the lack of materials, art resisted and had to work around the aesthetic of the victors. “The unstoppable desire to dynamise that artistic atmosphere that was so depressing and hostile was always there,” say Puigdollers and Catasús, who aim to rebuild a global vision of that period, and do so with a host of experts in a range of disciplines.

The book’s introduction is by Àlex Mitrani, to whom the MNAC national gallery has commissioned its new rooms for postwar art. The new policy by the country’s leading gallery to incorporate this period that has been so overlooked shows that the book has arrived at a good moment. And there is no time to lose, as the artists from that time begin to die off, such as Jaume Muxart, who passed away at the age of 96 on Friday.

“We have a great responsibility to safeguard this heritage. If we make the public aware, we will avoid losing things,” say the academics. “This book is not the end. It opens up many paths that need exploring. There is still a lot to study. The discourse of this period still has to be built.”