Overview

This groundbreaking book surveys the shifts in the aesthetic discourse and artistic practises that decisively influenced the shaping of the avant-garde during Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975). On the basis of extensive, so far unpublished, archival material, it discusses the intellectual and cultural field as an important battlefield for fighting the regime from within. The study opens with a comprehensive historical overview on the cultural world from the end of the Spanish Civil War throughout Francoism and reveals for the first time the broader intellectual and cultural context of vanguard art considering the special relations and negotiation processes between artist, critics and institutions during a major gap in the historiography of post-war Spanish culture: the late Franco dictatorship (1959-1975). It then analyses in depth the important role that a group of art critics played as theoreticians and peers in key artistic movements from the 1950s onwards. Using their extensive international networks in the midst of the Cold War period, they decisively influenced the aesthetic and cultural debates of their time and very concretely helped shaping a completely new discourse for the avant-garde in Spain. This book discusses the creation of this new discourse that linked culture and ethics/politics and analyses its impact on the intellectual and artistic landscape (visual, print and exhibition culture) during the last decades of Franco's regime. It is indebted to a cultural historic approach that takes high culture, popular culture, politics as well as the history of ideas in account studying the reciprocal transfer processes within these fields and across European and American geographies. This study and its interdisciplinary approach will be of interest to scholars in art history, visual, cultural and museum studies of modern Spain in particular and Europe in general.

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9781781383223

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A major contribution to Spanish art history scholarship, filling an important gap in the history of Spanish art, criticism, exhibitions and international networks of exchange during Late Francoism.

A major contribution to Spanish art history scholarship, filling an important gap in the history of Spanish art, criticism, exhibitions and international networks of exchange during Late Francoism. -- Dr. Miriam M. Basilio Gaztambide, Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies, New York University Based on extensive archival material - partly unpublished - and an up-to-date knowledge of publications on culture during late Francoism and its ideological burdens, the author is drawing a picture of the debates that shaped the intellectual life of that time. With this book, Paula Barreiro Lopez shows new ways of approaching these already known topics, analysing the many facets of Francoist cultural policies and the implications of the international context of the Cold War on plastic practices. But above all, she suggests new paths to understanding the internal opposition of the cultural field to Francoism. Among the latter, we can point out the study of the Marxist turn of a section of the criticism and the academic spheres during the 1960s, the cartography of the international connections of the leftist militant criticism, or the dualistic politicization and conflictive account of the avant-gardes' at the end of the dictatorship. Here is a book that any specialist of the Spanish culture of late Francoism should consult (and appreciate) in the future. Maria Dolores Jimenez-Blanco, Critique d'art

Author Information

Paula Barreiro Lopez is Lecturer in Art History at the University of Barcelona.

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