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FEBRUARY 4, 2002 | NO.4
The Pain In Spain
Britain's Imperial War Museum honors
the International Brigades with a personal and artistic reflection
on the Spanish Civil War
By MARYANN BIRD London
It was in Spain," wrote French author Albert Camus, "that
men learned that one can be right and still be beaten, that
force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage
is not its own reward." That, Camus added, is why so many
people around the world came to regard the Spanish Civil War
as a personal tragedy. "It was a war that, rightly or wrongly,
seemed very pure and worth fighting," says British historian
Paul Preston, one of the world's foremost authorities on the
1936-39 conflict. On both sides, "people had absolutely no
doubt about the moral choices that were at stake."
Against the backdrop of the latest international ideological
confrontation, and to mark the 65th anniversary of the International
Brigades-the 40,000-plus volunteers from some 50 countries
who rushed to Spain to aid the young Republican government
in its doomed struggle against the fascist-backed forces of
General Francisco Franco-Britain's Imperial War Museum has
assembled "The Spanish Civil War: Dreams + Nightmares." Running
until April 28, the exhibition focuses on the personal experiences
of soldiers and civilians as well as on the war-era art, literature
and music that was produced by some of the 20th century's
greatest cultural figures. "It is a magnificent collection
of objects and ideas that gives a sense of the universality
of the Spanish Civil War," says Preston, professor of contemporary
Spanish studies at the London School of Economics and the
exhibition's historical consultant.
Pablo Picasso's Weeping Woman, Robert Capa's photographs,
Pablo Casals' baton and Ernest Hemingway's dispatches share
space with such items as volunteers' letters, weapons, a campaign
map used by Franco, a Basque fighter's bullet-holed shirt,
a burned coin found in the rubble of the bombed market town
of Guernica, a dress worn by the fiery Spanish communist Dolores
Ib‡rruri (La Pasionaria) and drawings by Spanish children.
"There were dreams on both sides, as well as terrible nightmares,"
says Angela Godwin of the museum staff, who helped to assemble
the show. Much of the material has never been seen outside
Spain, and other items have come from museums, archives and
private collections in Europe and the U.S.
Although the best-known painting of the war, Picasso's Guernica,
remains at home in the Reina Sof’a Art Center in Madrid, there
are other powerful reminders of the 1937 attack on the Basque
town-in Preston's words, "the first total destruction of an
undefended civilian target by aerial bombardment." Along with
Weeping Woman, the display includes a Picasso pencil sketch
of a horse and a mother with a dead child-a study for Guernica-and
an etching that satirizes Franco, produced by Picasso to raise
money for the Republican cause. RenŽ Magritte's The Black
Flag, a dark painting depicting a sky full of strange and
sinister forms, gives "a foretaste of the terror that would
come from flying machines," Magritte later wrote.
The Basque artist Aurelio Arteta, who was forced into exile,
painted Triptych of the War, depicting regional soldiers being
crushed in trenches, civilians being killed and still others
fleeing by sea. Catalonia-born Joan Mir—, who spent much of
the war in Paris, produced several works related to the conflict,
including The Giant's Awakening. Salvador Dal’ and JosŽ Borras
Casanova, as well as sculptors such as Julio Gonz‡lez, are
represented by powerful works. So, too, is sculptor CŽsar
Manrique, who fought on Franco's Nationalist side although
he was not a fascist.
The complex and controversial Spanish Civil War began as
a series of social conflicts-between landless peasants and
landowners, industrial workers and industrialists, Catholics
and atheists. Sharply factionalized, the country was nearly
impossible to govern. Following a series of domestic events
in July 1936 (including two political killings and a military
coup gone wrong), the internal battles quickly took on international
dimensions.
Hitler and Mussolini came to the aid of the Nationalists,
while Stalin supported the Republicans. Britain and France
declined to intervene. "The Spanish Civil War was more than
a prelude to World War II," says Preston. "It was part of
it." If the noninterventionists had acted differently, he
maintains, "there wouldn't have been a World War II; Britain
and France would have clipped Hitler's wings in good time."
Instead, "an awful lot of people saw what was happening in
Spain, were aware of what had happened in Germany, Italy and
Austria [where fascist parties had taken power], and decided
they had to take things into their own hands." The International
Brigades were born.
Many of the faces of the foreign volunteers peer from photographs,
slide presentations and short film footage. Others leap from
the pages of diaries and letters mailed home. One of the many
black American volunteers wrote from Albacete in 1937, explaining
why he was in Spain: "Because, my dear, we have joined with,
and become an active part of, a great progressive force on
whose shoulders rests the responsibility of saving human civilization
... because if we crush fascism here, we'll save our people
in America, and in other parts of the world."
The war in Spain was the first to become known to the public
mainly through photographs. Thanks to technical improvements
in cameras and film, unstaged action shots became possible
and the birth of magazines such as Life in 1936 created a
mass market for photojournalism. Giants of the genre -Capa,
David Seymour, Agust’ Centelles and Antonio Campa–a-all captured
Spain's moments of both brutality and tenderness. "It is not
always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except
record the sufferings around me," noted Capa. He photographed
the exit of refugees from Barcelona to France in 1939, people
who were, wrote journalist Martha Gellhorn, "armed with transcendent
faith that makes miracles and changes history."
Along with the works of the great image-makers and the recorded
testimony of witnesses, "Dreams + Nightmares" is replete with
everyday items: Franco's winter cloak, postcards, badges,
tickets, poems, news clippings, food tins, Hemingway's press
pass. Amid the nightmare of the Spanish war, ordinary life
went on and extraordinary dreams took flight.
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