Memoirs of a Spanish Civil War Artist

Carles Fontserè, Mark Lodge, Maureen Shaughnessy, Mark Lodge, Maureen Shaughnessy

• Publisher: Pensódromo 21
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9788494552250
• eBook ISBN:
  9788494552267
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art & Politics

The political poster explosion of July 1936 has been highly acclaimed by critics and scholars worldwide. One of the best-known posters of the time, "Freedom!" – which has acquired near cult status – shows a peasant holding a sickle aloft, set against the anarchist red-and-black flag. The artist, Carles Fontserè, was just twenty years old when he joined the revolution along with fellow artists and comrades-in-arms, Josep Alumà, Helios Gómez, Antoni Clavé and many others who appear in this account.In his outstanding memoirs, which are more artistic, political and collective than intimate, Fontserè recounts his upbringing in a petit bourgeois family with Carlist leanings along with his experience in the Barcelona Requeté. His thirst for reading led him to the writings of Tolstoy, which inspired his nascent libertarian ideals culminating in his road-to-Damascus transformation during the heady events of the Nationalist military uprising in Barcelona.Fontserè played a key role in the founding of the Professional Drawing Union in 1936 and went on to draw posters for the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), among other political parties. He served with the International Brigades and, paradoxically, survived several close brushes with death from his own side. His story culminates with the Republican retreat from Barcelona and his escape over the Pyrenees, together with Catalan president Lluís Companys and his cabinet, into exile in France.Fontserè'sMemoirsof a Spanish Civil War Artist masterfully combines autobiography and history through the eyes of one of the 20th century's foremost Catalan graphic artists, known worldwide for his Republican propaganda posters. The book of Carles Fontserè's memoirs is not only an excellent translation from Catalan to English, but one central to the history of Catalonia.

Photographs & Posters

#1. Photograph published on 19 September 1936 in Life magazine. The posters and banner, written in Catalan, place the scene of the action in Catalonia.

#2. Proclamation of the Republic from the balcony of Barcelona City Council, 14 April 1931. Few people went to Plaça de Sant Jaume that morning, and the absence of flags was notable.

#3. Our home between 1929 and 1932 was a fourth-floor apartment at number 21 Carrer Balmes, between Gran Via and Diputació.

#4. My father, Francesc de P. Fontserè i Delgado, (circa 1912) as a bachelor.

#5. My mother and father met at a sardana dance and fell in love on the esplanade of Ciutadella Park, presided over by the waterfall designed by Josep Fontserè.

#6. My mother, Montserrat Carrió i Grau, with Francesc and I in the living room of our flat in Gran Via. 1920.

#7. With my brother Francesc, on the day of our First Communion. I was six years old.

#8. The four columns of Puig i Cadafalch, symbolizing the four bars of the Catalan shield, erected on open land that was to become the venue for the 1929 World’s Fair.

#9. From the balcony of our flat I would watch the construction of the so-called Metro Transversal, inaugurated in 1926, which ran the length of Gran Via.

#10. My mother, my brother and I. Summer of 1924 in Vilanova del Vallès.

#11. Grape picking in the Aragay family’s vineyard in Vilanova del Vallès. My brother (seated left) and I (centre) w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Credits
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Preface
• The Republic and the Requeté
• Enriching Experiences
• The Traditionalist Circle
• The Barcelona Requeté
• Early Political Drawings
• The Beginnings of a Profession
• Forerunners of Political Art in Autonomous Catalonia
• 1933: A Crucial Year
• The Revolution of 6 October 1934
• Graphic Artist
• The Elections of 16 February 1936
• Optimism of the Left
• The Founding of the Professional Drawing Union
• Not Just Any Summer Sunday
• The Solterra-Barbarà Palace
• The First Posters
• Colleagues and Fellow Travellers
• Other Professionals and Unions
• Antifacist Propaganda on Railway Carriages
• Social Strife and Mayhem
• The SDP: A Hub for Graphic Propaganda
• Revolutionary Cartoonists
• The Walls Speak Out
• From Worker Unity to the CADCI Meeting
• From the Catalan Militias to the Spanish Army
• The Watershed Moment of May 1937
• From the Rear-Guard to the Front and Vice Versa
• Catalans in the International Brigades
• Albacete, International BrigadeHeadquarters
• From Cambrils to the Ebro Front
• Between the Propaganda Commissariat and AAA Headquarters
• Barcelona, Capital of Republican Spain
• Last Days of the War in Catalonia
• Post Scriptum – The Survival of the Republican Poster
• A note on the translation
• Index of Acronyms
• Photographs & Posters
• Selection of posters by some of the artists mentioned by Carles Fontserè
• Acknowledgements
• Notes