This exhibition provides an overview of Federico Garcia Lorca’s (Fuente Vaqueros, 1898 - Granada, 1936) personal and artistic biography. His cities, friends, success and the poet’s loneliness are the four main topics used to display his public and private life. An extensive correspondence and personal documents are featured in the exhibition, as well as photographs, books and manuscripts. The exhibition is completed with the works of contemporary artists who share artistic and aesthetic concerns over his career. Among these are the most outstanding representatives of Madrid’s artistic avant-garde, such as Benjamín Palencia, Rafael Barradas, Gregorio Prieto, José Moreno Villa, Adriano del Valle and José Bergamin.
The exhibition begins with his childhood in his hometown and his subsequent integration into the cultural life of Granada, where he meets Juan Ramón Jiménez and Manuel de Falla. The influence of both marks the style of his poetry and his penchant for popular culture, and is developed in the exhibition under the term "jondo” (passionate flamenco). Later, Lorca moves to Madrid and his stay at the Residencia de Estudiantes marks a pivotal stage in his life. Opportunities for success and his friendship with Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Pepín Bello or Maruja Mallo, among others, trigger his work and creativity. His trip to New York and the stopover in Havana, allow him to make an alliance between the modern world and popular culture in a city which is a symbol of modernity.
His friendship with Dali lasts for ten years; their meeting is a crucial event that leads to his own iconographic creation and a self-ideology, present both in his writing and in his drawings. Conversely, he adds to his poems popular elements of Spanish tradition where the influence of two of his friends stand out: the bullfighter Ignacio Sánchez Mejías and the dancer known as La Argentinita. In time, he also includes in his life and work more high-brow aspects of music, painting, film and poetry, not to mention his admiration for the work of Luis de Góngora.
Lorca immediately recognises the success of his theatre pieces and poetry, where actresses contribute to the favourable reception of his work in global cities such as Montevideo or Buenos Aires. In addition, his passion for theatre intertwines with his popular and social side projects such as La Barraca and in his collaborations with independent groups such as the Anfístora theater club.
Regarding themes, for solitude, he finds in the image and metaphor of the shadow his best incarnation. Joy and sadness, celebration and tragedy are two sides of the same reality and are a necessary privacy. The mask, the rose and the butterfly drowning in an inkwell are some of the figures with which the poet identifies himself in his verses, which become a way of expressing his displeasure, led by the social hypocrisies of the time.
Exhibition´s details
Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona CCCB (October 15 - November 22, 1998); Palacio de los Condes de Gabia, Instituto de América, Centro Damián Bayón de Santa Fé, Granada (December 11, 1998 - February 10, 1999)
