Understanding Avant-Garde Movements and Generation of ’27
What are the Avant-Gardes?
A group of artistic and literary movements that developed in Europe and America during the first third of the twentieth century.
What is the Most Important Characteristic?
The common denominator of the avant-garde is a break with prior literature, art, and Western aesthetic tradition. It arose from dissatisfaction with the present, which accelerated after the First World War.
Four Common Characteristics:
- Antirealism: Disagreement with reality; the authors break with the idea of art and literature as an imitation of the outside world.
- Primitivism: Mythification of primitive man; the developers seek their inspiration in folk traditions or artistic manifestations of primitive cultures.
- Irrationalism: Rejection of reason and science as pillars of progress; irrational art based on chance and the unconscious.
- Originality: They want a new art form for a new time.
Main Avant-Garde Movements:
- Futurism: Fundamental trait is the exaltation of speed, technique, sport, or force; use of onomatopoeia and nonverbal cues; typographic innovations. Filippo Marinetti.
- Dadaism: Return to original innocence, associated with primitivism; cultivated phonetic poetry, works of absurdity, and provocation. Tristan Tzara.
- Surrealism: Advocated human liberation from the tyranny of reason and morality; were inspired by dreams and practiced automatic writing. Andre Breton.
- Cubism: Reclaimed autonomy of works of art; the writer seeks to capture the simultaneity of reality. Guillaume Apollinaire.
Initiator of the Avant-Garde in Spain:
Ramón Gómez de la Serna, his work is the greguerías.
What is the Generation of ’27?
It is a group of poets who published their first works between 1920-1930: Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, Gerardo Diego, Federico García Lorca, Vicente Aleixandre, Dámaso Alonso, Emilio Prados, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Manuel Altolaguirre.
Main Characteristics of the Generation of ’27:
They give cohesion to the group. They come from liberal middle-class families with creative writing backgrounds. Many were poets and professors of literature. They have a common aesthetic attitude, seeking a synthesis between tradition and innovation. His poems treat universal themes, they use established metrical schemes and receive the influence of ultraism, creationism, and surrealism. During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the Second Republic, they maintained co-evolution. The Civil War, the murder of García Lorca, led to exile and the dispersion of the group.
Why is it Called the Generation of ’27?
Because it is the name that identified the group of Spanish writers historically linked to the tribute to Luis de Góngora to be met in 1927, the tercentenary of his death.
What Two Lines Were Developed in the Generation of ’27?
- Neopopularismo: Gypsy Ballads by García Lorca. Marinero en tierra by Rafael Alberti.
- Pure Poetry: The Voice Due and Reason You Love by Pedro Salinas. Canticle by Jorge Guillén, Diary of a Newly Married Poet and Eternity by Juan Ramón Jiménez.
Principal Works that Influenced the Generation of ’27:
- The Reality and Desire by Luis Cernuda.
- About the Angels by Rafael Alberti.
- Poet in New York by Federico García Lorca.
- Destruction or Love and Swords Like Lips by Vicente Aleixandre.