Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War - Tapa dura

'Miriam M. Basilio's research has the merit of analyzing Franco's policies which are little known when compared with the programmes promoted in the Republican period, and sheds light on certain topics of debate (including the oeuvre of Francisco de Goya, for example), around which the strategies of both parties converge with the aim of appropriating them for themselves.' Critique d'Art '... Basilio is an interpreter of remarkable detail when it comes to the visual image. The strength of this book is in its thoroughness and in Basilio's transmission of a visual historical record that has not as yet been widely available.' Curator: The Museum Journal

Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War is a history of art during wartime that analyzes images in various media that circulated widely and were encountered daily by Spaniards on city walls, in print, and in exhibitions. Tangible elements of the nation’s past”monuments, cultural property, and art-historical icons”were displayed in temporary exhibitions and museums, as well as reproduced on posters and in print media, to rally the population, define national identity, and reinvent distant and recent history. Artists, political-party propagandists, and government administrators believed that images on the street, in print, and in exhibitions would create a community of viewers, brought together during the staging of public exhibitions to understand their own roles as Spaniards. This book draws on extensive archival research, brings to light unpublished documents, and examines visual propaganda, exhibitions, and texts unavailable in English. It engages with questions of national self-definition and historical memory at their intersections with the fine arts, visual culture, exhibition history, tourism, and propaganda during the Spanish Civil War and immediate post-war period, as well as contemporary responses to the contested legacy of the Spanish Civil War. It will be of interest to scholars in art history, visual and cultural history, history, and museum studies.