The Triumph of Realism

In March 1937, artist Francisco Carreño wrote in the pages of Nueva Cultura magazine that “[i]n contemporary Spanish art, realism has the floor”. By this, he referred to an art concerned with capturing reality. Indeed, the urgency to address current events in such critical circumstances as war led most artistic production to focus on the present. However, this did not mean that art necessarily had to be realist in form—that is, mimetic. In fact, some artists, including Carreño himself, rejected the purely aesthetic recreation of reality and called for an art full of emotion—such was the feeling that, inevitably, had to come through in the works of the time.

The need to create a more human art brought about by the war prompted a shift in the visual poetics of the time. The result was the emergence of a new trend—war realism—characterized by the predominance of realist figuration combined with elements from the most advanced styles of previous years, such as surrealism and modern figurative approaches. War realism did not represent a break with the preceding artistic period; rather, it was enriched by the stylistic heritage practiced by the artists.

Naturally, the importance of being understandable—as a requirement for art, whether testimonial or propagandistic—prevailed in most cases. As a result, many avant-garde artists adjusted their perspectives, focusing on events and their protagonists. Santiago Pelegrín’s “Evacuation and Defense of the North”, shown here, in which he chose a realism with forceful figures that was indebted to the Cubist works he had created not long before, is one example.

In war-realist works, such as “Evacuation and Defence of the North”, it is common to find an unmistakable epic tone that lends the scenes a grand and noble quality, often emphasized by the monumentality of the figures. In other cases—especially in works more heavily influenced by surrealism and expressionism—the epic tone gives way to a more or less explicit accusatory lament that reveals the painful face of war.

In any case, war realism emerged as the dominant trend in the visual arts during the armed conflict, demonstrating the importance artists placed on addressing the reality of the moment—and on doing so in an intelligible way—without abandoning the artistic lessons of previous years.

IEG