Catalan Avant-Garde Movements: Cubism, Futurism, and Surrealism
First Catalan Avant-Garde (1915): Cubism and Futurism
The first Catalan avant-garde movement coincided with similar movements in Europe. Barcelona was a city even more favorable than Paris to modern painting innovations. The starting point was the publication of the first Catalan language calligram (1915), “Ode to Guynemer,” stressed by the writer Joan Salvat-Papasseit.
Salvat-Papasseit was the first popularizer of the proletarian avant-garde. From a working-class family, he collaborated at a young age in the anarchist press. Without formal studies, his education was self-taught. He read Nietzsche, Gorky, and Margalit, which inspired the revolutionary content of his books.
Key Works:
- “Backbone”: Marks the evolution of poetic avant-garde in Catalonia, contrasting with Noucentisme.
- “Poems on Hertz Waves” and “Irradiador Port and the Gulls”: These books are the most avant-garde, containing elements of Cubism (calligrams) and Futurism (exaltation of the machine, aggression, different fonts).
- “Feat of the Stars”: Mythologizes everyday life.
- “Poem of the Pink Lips”: Evokes the calm and harmony of life, completing the conception of life as a miracle. The poem sings of love reduced to the act itself, expressed simply and freely.
Second Avant-Garde (1925-1936): Dada and Surrealism
This avant-garde was influenced by Dada and Surrealism. During this period, it became a genuine cultural agitation movement, formed by Salvador Dalí, Luis Montanyà, and Sebastian Gasch. The group headed by Salvador Dalí is particularly noteworthy. Their Yellow Manifesto acted as a shock to Catalan intellectual life, promoting a campaign of subversion and dissemination of new art forms. One of the main channels was the magazine “The Friend of the Arts,” directed by J.V. Foix. This magazine became a solid platform for the artistic avant-garde, which included Federico Garcia Lorca. The most important manifestation of this group was “Clear Yellow,” a yellow sheet attacking Noucentista ideas.
Avant-Gardism in Valencia
The Yellow Manifesto also had repercussions in the Valencian Country. The magazine reproduced key points, and shortly after, the Valencian poet Carles Salvador published two articles in this journal entitled “Jazz” and “Machine and Poetry,” causing controversy among Valencian writers. Two camps formed: one promoting the literary tradition of Valencia and the other defending the avant-garde (Carles Salvador, Maximiliano Thous). The first group argued that the avant-garde was an elitist, reactionary literature, while the avant-garde supporters defended the need to renew and update the Valencian literary scene. Carles Salvador’s works “To Major in Red,” “Compass Rose,” and “The Kiss on the Lips” reveal the influence of the Catalan avant-garde, particularly Joan Salvat-Papasseit, in breaking with graphic verse and constructing images and motifs related to the introduction of the Machine.
Josep Vicent Foix
Foix was a key figure in spreading the artistic avant-garde. His narrative prose writing attempted to reproduce the influence of free dreams. In “Gertrude” and “Krtu,” elements of intuition, not rational reality, influenced by Surrealism, appear. Later, he evolved into an aesthetic that moved away from the avant-garde without abandoning the spirit of modern research. The war brought silence and collaborations with the postwar “Friends of Poetry.” “Sol and Mourning” (1947) is Foix’s first book of poetry, containing 70 sonnets written in a style that blends modern and medieval language, taking as its model the poets of the Middle Ages, with the avant-garde. It contains classical themes such as reflection on the difficulty of knowing individual identity, the conflict between the new and the old, the instant and eternity. “Unreal the Omegas” consists of 13 poems headed by a long title, playing with a dreamy atmosphere with precise images and personal anecdotes: anxiety, confusion, exaltation of self, and collective reflections on the moral defeat during and after the Spanish Civil War.