The MNAC confronts the republican and Francoist accounts of artwork safety within the Civil War | Culture | EUROtoday

In a struggle there are at the very least two tales. And the brand new exhibition on the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC), Recovered from the enemy, opinions its personal historical past and that of its collections, specializing in the works deposited in the identical museum by the National Heritage Defense Service (SPDAN), the Franco group that managed the creative heritage when it gained the Civil War. These are 135 items, many with out acknowledged authorship, that remained within the deposits of the Palau Nacional after the official administration after the battle, which usually concerned return. But underlying the whole exhibition is the story of the defeated: the Republican Generalitat dispersed the works to save lots of them from the bombs, the revolutionaries or some other hazard of that merciless interval, which devastated all the pieces, in order that the Franco regime rescued nothing.

The director of the MNAC, Pepe Serra, has stated that Recovered from the enemy. Francoist deposits within the MNAC (till June 28) is the continuation of The museum at risk! which defined the duty of defending cultural belongings after the outbreak of the Civil War underneath the route of Joaquim Folch i Torres. The Museu d’Art de Catalunya (precedent of the MNAC) had been inaugurated in 1929 and the mission was to guard its heritage from attainable bombings and looting. Among the completely different locations had been the church of Sant Esteve in Olot or warehouses in Bescanó, Darnius or Agullana. “It is an exercise in memory, transparency and reparation,” famous the director.

The new exhibition continues this story of safeguarding following the analysis work of the Cultural Heritage Research Institute. The middle’s researchers and curators, Gemma Domènech i Casadevall and Eduard Caballé i Colom, have stated that the precursors lie within the query of how the Civil War impacted the configuration of Catalan museums. The MNAC is barely one of many fifty which can be analyzing a undertaking that can finish in August 2026, when they’ll have conclusions from the whole search.

Even so, Domènech has been clear: “Neither the heritage was in danger, nor did they recover or save anything,” she emphasised, to which Eduard Caballé added that the Republican Generalitat “had already safeguarded many pieces and the Franco regime wanted to combat that story by creating the SDPAN.” The exhibition begins with a beforehand unreleased video exhibiting how the museum’s technicians ready the works for his or her evacuation in the summertime of 1936, a footage that the University of California, Los Angeles has just lately digitized.

Skipping the aesthetic norms of any exhibition, the fifty chosen works additionally present their reverse aspect, because the B aspect of the work permits their traceability to be seen. Thus, along with the ‘Recovered from Enemy’ label stamped on most, different information, equivalent to registrations, are additionally acknowledged. The crossed out quantity predates the War whereas probably the most seen is the stamp printed by the SDPAN.

For Caballé, the fragment that can also be included from a letter from agent Josep Puigdengolas Barella to agent Enric Monjo Garriga dated 1938 may be very vital: “Everything or virtually all the pieces that we had been classifying and sending a report back to the Police Station, was already duly saved, whether or not destined for church buildings or protected locations (…) however I see that the brokers of the service name this ‘restoration’, as I’m nonetheless a novice on this service, these items shock me loads.”

Between 1939 and 1958, the majority of dispersed works returned to Barcelona and the work of the Heritage Defense Service consisted of returning them to their owners. But it was not an easy replacement, Domènech pointed out, because the regulations were restrictive: a formal application had to be submitted, proof of ownership and demonstration of adherence to the regime. This system excluded those exiled, those retaliated against, or those killed during the war and the postwar period. In many ways, “it’s tough to make sure a few very turbulent interval,” stressed Eduard Vallès, head of collections at the MNAC, who has also defended that “the works are what communicate, with none mental a priori… it’s the historical past of the nation.”

This exhibition could allow some people to recognize works that are listed as anonymous or the possible ownership of others that do have an author. Some of the most curious are a head of Christ attributed to Jaume Cascalls, an alabaster carving from 1352 that no one understands why it has not been claimed for its value; or a set of Picasso-style paintings that could be the work of the students of some painting school. Perhaps the exhibition will serve to redouble the historical reparation and return them to the place from which they had to be exiled.