Avant-garde Art and Criticism in Francoist Spain

Paula Barreiro López is lecturer at the Art History Department of the University of Barcelona (Ramón y Cajal programme) and head of research of Modernidades Descentralizadas. Since 2007 she has worked at several European research institutions and universities in France, the U.K., Switzerland and Spain. Her research focuses on art criticism, cultural networks and politics in Spain, Western Europe and Latin America during the Cold War as well as the diverse and divergent developments of modernity reflected in the art historic accounts within an increasingly globalised world. Her publications include the books Modernidad y vanguardia: rutas de intercambio entre España y Latinoamérica, 2015 (edited with Fabiola Martínez); Crítica(s) de arte: discrepancias e hibridaciones de la Guerra Fría a la globalización, 2014 (edited with Julián Díaz) and La abstracción geométrica en España, 2009.

• Acknowledgements vii Introduction: Spanish aesthetic discourses:modernity, ideology and dictatorship 1 Modernism(s) - avant-garde(s). Spain: an integrated case? 8 Methods, structure and sequence 14 1. From Guernica to the international alliances: culture, art, and society 21 The Cultural battle lines of the Civil War The 'bread' of the victors: art and culture under autarky 'We welcome you, Americans, with joy!': international and domestic cultural policies in the early 1950s 2. 'Spain is different': art, culture and propaganda in the era of the consumer society 71 The language of technocracy 73 The equivocal fruits of apertura 89 Dissent in the twilight of Francoism 107 3. Critics and networks: assuming militant criticism 121 Critical networks 122 Militant criticism 'all' Argan' 137 Militant critics in Spain 149 4. The 'Marxization' of art criticism: information, ideology and anti-Francoism 164 Marx through the 'backroom' 166 'Widening the cracks': Nulla aesthetica sine ethica 181 Militant Criticism at the service of anti-Francoism 193 Mediations: miliatnt critics providing 'information' and 'ideology' 5. Adoption(s), adaption(s) and artistic praxi 221 The sociological turn(s) of the militant critics 222 'Solutions of the transformation': militant critics and avant-garde artists in collaboration 233 The nature of the avant-garde: a conflicting issue EpilogueArtistic avant-garde and social reality: a battle for the meaning of modern art 293 Primary Sources 309 Secondary Sources 320 Abbreviations 337 Index 338

'The principal attraction of this book lies not only in the author’s approach to this period but also in the fact that it is one of the few scholarly works on the subject published in English. As such, it begins to remedy international ignorance of the art of the Franco era.'Genoveva Tusell, The Burlington Magazine