133- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Abstract ideas: how Spanish art developed under Franco
No one would blame you for assuming that a traditionalist
like Franco had little time for modern art. In terms of
personal taste, he probably didn’t. And to begin with the
new regime peddled a safe social realism, wheeling out the
rather elderly Ignacio Zuloaga as its model Spanish painter;
chosen as an artist who captured the deep solidity of
Spain’s reverent, peasanty core. Perhaps predictably the
approach backfired, simply providing any young anarchical
brushsmith with an easy guide in what to rebel against.
All things considered it wasn’t an overly vibrant period for
Spanish art. However, by the early 1950s the cultural
climate was changing. After cosying-up to the United
States, Franco, eager to show his new allies in the fight
against communism that Spain was a culturally progressive
state, actually began to champion the international artistic
flavour of the day, Expressive Abstraction. In Spain, they
called the movementInformalismo. Some have suggested
that the work of Spanish abstract artists in the 50s was so
off the wall that any anti-regime sentiment contained
within couldn’t be understood anyway, and Franco was
therefore happy to let it develop largely unfettered.School mates:Dau al SetandEl Paso
A couple of artistic movements took brief but influential
shape in the first two decades of Franco’s rule.Dau al Set
was a Catalan affair, rising from a creative brew of local
literature and French Surrealism in the late 1940s. Painters
took inspiration from Miró in particular, filling their work
with a dreamy symbolism that eschewed the officially
sanctioned style of those early Franco years.Dau el Set
was disbanded in 1953 but from the ashes rose Antoni
Tàpies. Painting highly expressive, radically abstract work
that incorporated marble dust, plaster, paper and soil, he
became the most important Spanish painter of the later
20 thcentury.3.1.7 Pick ‘n’ mix: Spanish art since the Civil War