Carles Fontsere; Catalan graphic artist drew the famous Spanish Civil War posters
Hyfler/Rosner
February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Carles Fontsere: Catalan artist loyal to the memory of the
republican Spain his work inspired
BYLINE: Michael Eaude
Carles Fontsere Carrio, graphic artist and writer, born
1916; died January 4 2007
Here's a great 403 warning:
http://www.sbhac.net/Republica/Carteles/Fontsere/GCE_0959_Fontsere_Lliberta.jpg
Here's the great Libertat poster:
http://increvablesanarchistes.org/affiches/aff1936_45/36afffai_libertat.jpg
The Catalan artist and writer Carles Fontsere, who has died
aged 90, drew many of the best-known posters of the Spanish
civil war. Muscular and strong, with piercing eyes and
voice - and white-bearded in old age - he looked like the
implacable old anarchist he was.
He led a life that reads like a picaresque novel.
Self-taught, he started work at the age of 15 in a theatre
design workshop, developing his skills with cinema posters,
book covers and adverts. When the civil war broke out in
1936, he became active in the union of graphic artists. The
walls of Barcelona were plastered with these artists'
posters, as George Orwell noted on his arrival in the city
that December: "The revolutionary posters were everywhere,
flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the
few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud."
Influenced by the art of the Mexican and Russian
revolutions, the expressive force of these posters made them
key weapons in the war against the fascist uprising. Indeed,
they were known as "paper and ink soldiers" because of their
mobilising power. Fontsere was only 20 when he drew his
famous Llibertat!, which transmitted its message by allusion
to Catalan revolutionary tradition - the raised sickle in
the peasant's hand was the symbol of Catalonia's peasant-led
rebellion against Spain in 1641.
Fontsere was one of many Spaniards who fought with the
International Brigades in the 1938 Battle of the Ebro. At
the end of the war, he left Spain for exile. Held briefly in
the beach prison camp at St Cyprien, in southern France, he
escaped and survived without papers in occupied Paris during
the second world war. In 1944 he resumed his work in theatre
design, moving to Mexico in 1948, where the famous comedian
Cantinflas hired him to design a musical comedy set.
From 1951 to 1973, Fontsere lived in New York, working for
many years as a taxi driver as well as drawing comics,
designing sets and taking photographss. Most importantly, he
married Terry Broch, a New Yorker and daughter of Catalans,
who was to become his lifelong partner. In 1973 he finally
returned to the village of Porqueres, on the shore of
Catalonia's biggest lake, Banyoles, in the pre-Pyrenees.
Here, he and Terry built a house and a studio on top of a
hill overlooking the village.
Fontsere's greatest achievements, both inspired by the
anarchist flame, came at the start and the end of his life.
He was the youngest - and the last survivor - of the
revolutionary poster artists of 1936. More recently, he
published three volumes of autobiography, Memories d'un
cartellista catala (Memoirs of a Catalan Poster Artist,
1995), Un exiliat de tercera (A Third-Class Exile) and
Paris, Mexic, Nova York (both 2004). These long, excellently
written books are detailed, historically researched accounts
of his civil war and exile experience.
Fontsere's memoirs, more about his times than himself,
challenge official versions of the 1939 exodus from Spain
with a well-researched, impassioned indictment of Catalan,
Spanish and French rewriting of this history. Stubborn and
uncompromising, Fontsere expressed his intentions with the
title of his second volume. The first-class exiles were the
well-known politicians and artists of the Spanish republic.
Fontsere identified with the third class: interned and dying
in disease-ridden beach camps, at best released to work 12
hours a day in French war industries or become cannon-fodder
in the second world war. He ruffled many establishment
feathers with his denunciation of the abandonment of the
civil war's foot soldiers: "No relevant figure of the
republic - Negrin, Companys, Picasso, Pau (Pablo) Casals -
had the courage to go to a French concentration camp with
the objective of being the last to leave it, as they say
that a captain does when his ship sinks."
Throughout his life, Fontsere remained faithful to the
libertarian ideals that lit up his 1936 posters. His last
campaign was to retrieve the Catalan archives removed by
Franco to Salamanca, which included much of his own work.
The campaign was won, but he died before his papers actually
arrived. Broch survives him
Michael Eaude
Carles Fontsere Carrio, graphic artist and writer, born
1916; died January 4 2007
Fontsere's famous Llibertat! poster and (right) the artist
with a volume of his controversial memoirs
Hyfler/Rosner
>
> Carles Fontsere Carrio, graphic artist and writer, born
> 1916; died January 4 2007
>
> Here's a great 403 warning:
> http://www.sbhac.net/Republica/Carteles/Fontsere/GCE_0959_Fontsere_Lliberta.jpg
Darn, it didn't work. Or rather, it worked. Just when you
want it not to work, it works.
Hyfler/Rosner
"Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:x7OdnQ9yqIccuEbY...@rcn.net...
Ok, I got help from a regular lurker who showed me how to
make it not work:
http://www.sbhac.net/Republica/Carteles/Fontsere/