Josep Renau & the Politics of Culture in Republican Spain, 1931-1939: Re-Imagining the Nation (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781845197391)

At once pragmatic and utopian, the Spanish artist, critic and political activist Josep Renau engaged in multiple ways in the volatile cultural conflicts of interwar Europe, which converged on Spain in the Second Republic's battle to modernise both politics and society (1931-1939). Renau used his idiosyncratic artwork and agit-prop, inspired by the Constructivists and the German avant-garde, to critique the timidity of the Republic's first democratising reforms. To envision an alternative, he launched arts organisations and magazines whose goal was to begin the work of redefining Spanish national self-image through cultural innovation. The ideas Renau developed would soon come to shape government policy during the war in Spain (1936-39) when Renau served as the Republic's Director General of Fine Arts. In power, Renau was a tireless cultural innovator, whose initiatives not only helped mobilise tens of thousands of Republicans but also shaped the new collective imaginaries
emerging from the conflict.


Author: Carl-Henrik Bjerstroem
ISBN-10: 1845197399
ISBN-13: 9781845197391
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Language: English
Published: 02/01/2016
Pages: 272
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 0.80d

About the Author

Carl-Henrik Bjerstrom is a historian specialising in the cultural history of modern Spain, particularly the Second Republic of 1931-1939. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE, as well as a visiting tutor at Royal Holloway, University of London. Other research interests include the social history of interwar Europe, modernism, and the history of photography and film.