POSTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BROUGHT HOME FROM THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR BY AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS

A Traveling Exhibit

Curated for ALBA, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives,
by Cary Nelson and Peter Carroll

34 framed color posters highlight this traveling exhibit of Spanish Civil War political art done by many of the leading Spanish artists of the time. The exhibit is accompanied by explanatory wall text, black and white photographs, and an illustrated catalogue (see below).

Content

• 34 color posters, framed
• 7 color lithographs, one frame
• 30 black and white photographs from Spain, framed
• 7 panels of descriptive wall text
• approximately 270 linear feet (can be modified to suit existing spaces)
  

Cost

• $6,000 participation fee, including rental and insurance
• $1,000 transportation fee
  

Supplementary Materials

• catalogue with color reproductions produced by co-curator Cary Nelson
• documentary video, Eric Sevareid's "Between the Wars"
• high school curriculum, "The Spanish Civil War: U.S. Foreign Policy & Individual Conscience Between the World Wars"
• audio recordings and music from the Spanish Civil War
• participants for lectures, panel discussions and film/video screenings
  

SHOUTS FROM THE WALL: POSTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BROUGHT HOME FROM THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR BY AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS

Shouts From The Wall, curated by Professor Cary Nelson and Peter Carroll, demonstrates the power of art fused to political and social purpose in a time of war. The exhibit combines a wide range of styles, from the surrealism of Ramón Puyol to the expressionist realism of José Bardasano; most posters utilized vivid watercolors usually reproduced on newsprint for various political parties, trade unions, or governmental offices.

Their purpose was to arouse, educate, warn, and inspire a population under Fascist attack, and they appeared everywhere: on the sides of buildings, train stations, factories, and at recruiting centers for the Republic.

They often had specific goals: to end illiteracy, focus attention on the plight of refugees, or stiffen morale, and their subjects reflected the changing, and deteriorating, course of the war for the Loyalist cause as well as the different Leftist ideologies -- Communist, Socialist, Anarchist -- that infused the Spanish Republic from 1936-1939.

As Robert Merriman, first commander of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, wrote in his diary upon arrival in Spain in early 1937,

Barcelona beautiful.
Streets aflame with posters
of all parties for all causes....

Organization of the Exhibit

SHOUTS FROM THE WALL is organized into four major sections:

• Part One: The Struggle Against Fascism - covers the broad international issues most relevant during the Spanish Civil War, and includes several anti-war images of history's first saturation bombing of civilian targets
• Part Two: Four Artists - examines the four styles and visions of poster artists Sim, Bardasano, Puyol, and Renau
• Part Three: Art and Politics - a representative anthology of subject and viewpoint as expressed by Spanish wartime poster art
• Part Four: A Lincoln Brigade Album - a photographic tribute to the men and women who brought the posters home, including contemporary statements, selections from letters written during the fighting, and a full size, five foot wide color photograph of perhaps the only wall newspaper to have survived the war intact

The exhibit is presented by ALBA and is made possible through generous grants from the Puffin Foundation, the Charles Lawrence Keith and Clara Miller Foundation, the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United States Universities, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Needmor Fund.

ALBA wishes to especially acknowledge and thank Perry Rosenstein and Gladys Miller-Rosenstein of the Puffin Foundation for their friendship and on-going support for this project.

Professional services have been provided by the Technical Assistance Program, a division of the American Federation of Arts.

For additional information or to book the exhibits please contact:
	Peter N. Carroll