Josep Renau and the Politics of Culture in Republican Spain, 1931-1939

Josep Renau and the Politics of Culture in Republican Spain, 1931-1939 PDF Author: Carl-Henrik Bjerström
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781845198077
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
At once pragmatic and utopian, the Spanish artist, critic and political activist Josep Renau engaged in multiple ways in the volatile cultural conflicts of interwar Europe, which converged on Spain in the Second Republic's battle to modernise both politics and society (1931-1939). Renau used his idiosyncratic artwork and agit-prop, inspired by the Constructivists and the German avant-garde, to critique the timidity of the Republic's first democratising reforms. To envision an alternative, he launched arts organisations and magazines whose goal was to begin the work of redefining Spanish national self-image through cultural innovation. The ideas Renau developed would soon come to shape government policy during the war in Spain (1936-39) when Renau served as the Republic's Director General of Fine Arts. In power, Renau was a tireless cultural innovator, whose initiatives not only helped mobilise tens of thousands of Republicans but also shaped the new collective imaginaries emerging from the conflict. This book offers the first interdisciplinary and contextualised analysis of the relationship between art and politics in Renau's work at the time of Spain's pivotal attempt to pursue democratic forms of modernisation. It traces the connections between Renau's political goals and the specific visual strategies he deployed, providing a comprehensive historical assessment of his attempts to turn protean theory into effective practice. In spite of the Republic's military defeat, Renau's work, and the wartime cultural programme he inspired and impelled, offer fertile material for debates on the dynamic relationship between culture and democracy in ways which remain as relevant and urgent today as they were when Renau took up the challenge. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE.

Josep Renau and the Politics of Culture in Republican Spain, 1931-1939

Josep Renau and the Politics of Culture in Republican Spain, 1931-1939 PDF Author: Carl-Henrik Bjerström
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781845198077
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
At once pragmatic and utopian, the Spanish artist, critic and political activist Josep Renau engaged in multiple ways in the volatile cultural conflicts of interwar Europe, which converged on Spain in the Second Republic's battle to modernise both politics and society (1931-1939). Renau used his idiosyncratic artwork and agit-prop, inspired by the Constructivists and the German avant-garde, to critique the timidity of the Republic's first democratising reforms. To envision an alternative, he launched arts organisations and magazines whose goal was to begin the work of redefining Spanish national self-image through cultural innovation. The ideas Renau developed would soon come to shape government policy during the war in Spain (1936-39) when Renau served as the Republic's Director General of Fine Arts. In power, Renau was a tireless cultural innovator, whose initiatives not only helped mobilise tens of thousands of Republicans but also shaped the new collective imaginaries emerging from the conflict. This book offers the first interdisciplinary and contextualised analysis of the relationship between art and politics in Renau's work at the time of Spain's pivotal attempt to pursue democratic forms of modernisation. It traces the connections between Renau's political goals and the specific visual strategies he deployed, providing a comprehensive historical assessment of his attempts to turn protean theory into effective practice. In spite of the Republic's military defeat, Renau's work, and the wartime cultural programme he inspired and impelled, offer fertile material for debates on the dynamic relationship between culture and democracy in ways which remain as relevant and urgent today as they were when Renau took up the challenge. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE.

Transatlantic Antifascisms

Transatlantic Antifascisms PDF Author: Michael Seidman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108417787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The first comprehensive scholarly account of antifascism, analysing its development in Spain, France, Britain and the USA.

Women Political Prisoners after the Spanish Civil War

Women Political Prisoners after the Spanish Civil War PDF Author: Ruth Fisher
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1782847022
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
At the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned for political crimes in the weeks and months following 1st April 1939, including thousands of women who were charged with offences ranging from directing the home front to supporting their loved ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published texts about their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard and to counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the right-wing victors that had criminalised their existence. The memoirs of Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Doña, have heavily influenced our understanding of life in prison for women under franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have largely been ignored. This monograph offers a comparative study of the life writing of female political prisoners in Spain, focusing on six texts in particular: the two volumes of Cárcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la niebla by Juana Doña; Réquiem por la libertad by Ángeles García-Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa Garcia Segret; and Aquello sucedió así by Ángeles Malonda. All the texts share common themes, such as describing the hunger and repression that all political prisoners suffered. However, the ideologically-driven narratives of Communist women often foreground representations of resistance at the expense of exploring the emotional and intellectual struggle for survival that many women political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as individuals and as a collective, analysing how women political prisoners sought recognition and justice in the face of a vindictive dictatorship. It also explores the women's response to the spirit of convivencia during the transition to democracy, which once again threatened to silence them.

Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War

Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War PDF Author: Sebastiaan Faber
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 0826504051
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
The ability to forget the violent twentieth-century past was long seen as a virtue in Spain, even a duty. But the common wisdom has shifted as increasing numbers of Spaniards want to know what happened, who suffered, and who is to blame. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War shows how historiography, fiction, and photography have shaped our views of the 1936-39 war and its long, painful aftermath. Faber traces the curious trajectories of iconic Spanish Civil War photographs by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour; critically reads a dozen recent Spanish novels and essays; interrogates basic scholarly assumptions about history, memory, and literature; and interviews nine scholars, activists, and documentarians who in the past decade and a half have helped redefine Spain's relationship to its past. In this book Faber argues that recent political developments in Spain--from the grassroots call for the recovery of historical memory to the indignados movement and the foundation of Podemos--provide an opportunity for scholars in the humanities to engage in a more activist, public, and democratic practice.

Lawfare — Judicial Warfare in Spain

Lawfare — Judicial Warfare in Spain PDF Author: Damià Del Clot
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1782847804
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
For centuries, the Spanish state has proved to be an expert system for repressing political dissent and any threat that could jeopardize the maintenance of the status quo. It has done so using all the institutions and all the areas of power that were necessary, for the end has always justified the means. Carles Mundo, Catalan Minister of Justice, 2016-2017. There is no book in Spain that talks about lawfare. Nor is there a book that deals with the system of judicial repression of political dissidence deployed by the Franco regime. Nor is there a book that denounces the judicial system inherited from the dictatorial regime and that was later embodied in the 1978 Constitution. Lawfare (the combination of law and warfare) thus fills a void to the extent that it penetrates the authoritarian judicial system and highlights the democratic deficits of the Spanish judiciary. The politicization of justice began with the appointment, as president of the Constitutional Court, of a prominent member of the Peoples Party (Partido Popular PP) in 2013. Thereon started a process of judicialization of politics via reform of the Organic Law of the Court Constitutional. The referendums of November 9, 2014 and October 1, 2017 entailed the criminalization of the Catalan independence movement and a drastic reduction in fundamental rights linked to the exercise of political choice. This was confirmed by the judgment handed down by the Supreme Court in 2019, culminating in a lawfare strategy that has led to the criminal conviction of two presidents of the Generalitat Artur Mas and Joaquim Torra and the exile of a third president, Carles Puigdemont. Lawfare is the first book to link in a broad way the thinking of German jurists of the Nazi period to the training of judges in Spain both up to and during the Franco regime, and beyond. Published in collaboration with the Department of International History, London School of Economics

Medicine and Conflict

Medicine and Conflict PDF Author: Sebastian Browne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351186493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This book focuses on an important but neglected aspect of the Spanish Civil War, the evolution of medical and surgical care of the wounded during the conflict. Importantly, the focus is from a mainly Spanish perspective – as the Spanish are given a voice in their own story, which has not always been the case. Central to the book is General Franco’s treatment of Muslim combatants, the anarchist contribution to health, and the medicalisation of propaganda – themes that come together in a medico-cultural study of the Spanish Civil War. Suffusing the narrative and the analysis is the traumatic legacy of conflict, an untreated wound that a new generation of Spaniards are struggling to heal.

Theses Completed 2014

Theses Completed 2014 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909646063
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
- Lists over 600 theses on historical topics completed during 2014 in UK and Irish universities - Includes not only history departments, but other departments where historical subjects might be taught - Gives full details of title, supervisor and university - Provides a subject index to aid searching, together with indexes of universities and authors The online version of Theses Completed is published on the IHR's website, where searches can be conducted by type of history, geographical area or period.

The Faith and the Fury

The Faith and the Fury PDF Author: Maria Thomas
Publisher: Apollo Books
ISBN: 9781845195465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In Spain, the five-year period following the proclamation of the Republic in April 1931 was marked by physical assaults upon the property and public ritual of the Spanish Catholic Church. These attacks were generally carried out by rural and urban anticlerical workers who were frustrated by the Republic's practical inability to tackle the Church's vast power. On July 17/18, 1936, a right-wing military rebellion divided Spain geographically, provoking the radical fragmentation of power in the territory which remained under Republican authority. The coup marked the beginning of a conflict which developed into a full-scale civil war. Anticlerical protagonists, with the reconfigured structure of political opportunities working in their favor, participated in an unprecedented wave of iconoclasm and violence against the clergy. During the first six months of the conflict, innumerable religious buildings were destroyed and almost 7,000 religious personnel were killed. To date, scholarly interpretations of these violent acts were linked to irrationality, criminality, and primitiveness. However, the reasons for these outbursts are more complex and deep-rooted: Spanish popular anticlericalism was undergoing a radical process of reconfiguration during the first three decades of the 20th century. During a period of rapid social, cultural, and political change, anticlerical acts took on new - explicitly political - meanings, becoming both a catalyst and a symptom of social change. After July 17/18, 1936, anticlerical violence became a constructive force for many of its protagonists: an instrument with which to build a new society. This book explores the motives, mentalities, and collective identities of the groups involved in anticlericalism, during the pre-war Spanish Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War. It will be is essential reading for all those interested in 20th-century Spanish history.

Documenting Spain: Artists, Exhibition Culture, and the Modern Nation, 1929Ð1939

Documenting Spain: Artists, Exhibition Culture, and the Modern Nation, 1929Ð1939 PDF Author:
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271047201
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The news media have given us potent demonstrations of the ambiguity of ostensibly truthful representations of public events. Jordana Mendelson uses this ambiguity as a framework for the study of Spanish visual culture from 1929 to 1939--a decade marked, on the one hand, by dictatorship, civil war, and Franco's rise to power and, on the other, by a surge in the production of documentaries of various types, from films and photographs to international exhibitions. Mendelson begins with an examination of El Pueblo Español, a model Spanish village featured at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona. She then discusses Buñuel's and Dalí's documentary films, relating them not only to French Surrealism but also to issues of rural tradition in the formation of regional and national identities. Her highly original book concludes with a discussion of the 1937 Spanish Pavilion, where Picasso's famed painting of the Fascist bombing of a Basque town--Guernica--was exhibited along with monumental photomurals by Josep Renau. Based upon years of archival research, Mendelson's book opens a new perspective on the cultural politics of a turbulent era in modern Spain. It explores the little-known yet rich intersection between avant-garde artists and government institutions. It shows as well the surprising extent to which Spanish modernity was fashioned through dialogue between the seemingly opposed fields of urban and rural, fine art, and mass culture.

Josep Renau, fotomontador

Josep Renau, fotomontador PDF Author: Josep Renau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Photography, Artistic
Languages : es
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Considerado como el introductor del fotomontaje político en España, Renau dedicó gran parte de su actividad plástica al fotomontaje. Con esta técnica ilustró revistas, diseñó carteles, realizó algunos murales y creó diversas series temáticas. La muestra es una selección representativa de su obra, estructurada en tres grandes secciones que incluyen las que realizó en las ciudades donde vivió y trabajó: Valencia, Ciudad de México y Berlín.