Maruja Mallo and the Spanish avant-garde
By: Shirley Mangini
Contributors: Mallo, Maruja
Series: Ashgate studies in surrealism
Publisher: Ashgate
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT
Language: eng
Number of pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9780754669326
Description: This booh is a major contribution to studies of the highly regarded twentieth-century Spanish painter, Maiufa Multl, and more broadly to out knowledge of the Spanish avant garde, ital Mtimfumaty flowemm of Spanish Culture in the 1920s and 1930s. Shirley Mangini has masterfully woven together the historical context, the artist's personal biography, and analyses of the various phases of her painting into a gripping nanative. Hers is an authoritative and detailed account of this astonishing woman, who forged an artistic career in an era in Spain that was particularly hostile to women artists and writers--Roberta Johnson. University of Kansas and UCLA. USA author of Gender and Nation in the Spanish Modernist Novel.

The first book in English on Maruja Mallo, this volume is an insightful examination of the life and work of this seminal artist of the Spanish avant-garde. Previously sidelined by a culture that treated women as "insider-outsiders" and by her own mythmaking, Mallo no longer can be viewed as simply a muse to famous counterparts such as Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca; her role has been re-contextualized to demonstrate that she was a driving force in the flowering of Spanish culture through the 1920s and 1930s.

The analysis of Mallo's unique life and extraordinary art is set against the complicated social and political backdrop of interwar Madrid. This book highlights the struggle of Mallo and other women artists against the rampant misogyny of both Spanish culture and the avant-garde community of the time. The effects of the Spanish Civil War are also analyzed--in Mallo's case, Franco's victory forced her into exile in South America for almost 30 years, with profound effects on her art and her life. Added to this rich context, the author's numerous interviews with members of the Mallo family provide essential new background material. Maruja Mallo and the Spanish Avant-Garde recasts this artist as a vital figure in the heretofore all-male establishment of the Spanish artistic vanguard. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Mallo's early years. Mallo's childhood; title: Spanish art in the early 20th century; title: The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando; title: The Residencia de Estudiantes; title: Maruja Mallo and the "Residencia"; title: Mallo's rise to fame. The Verbenas and prints series; title: Mallo's debut at the Revista de Occidente offices; title: Surrealism in Madrid. The "generation of 27"; title: The complicated relationship between Mallo and Rafael Alberti; title: The "Vallecas School"; title: The impact of sewers and belfries in Madrid; title: The 1930s : from Surrealism to humanism. Mallo in Paris; title: Mallo's return to Madrid : the new humanism; title: Pablo Neruda and the "generation of 27"; title: Miguel Hernández; title: Mallo's final months in Spain; title: Mallo's exile in Argentina. The civil war years and the religion of work series; title: The 1940s : the new Mallo; title: The 1950s : Mallo's alienation in Buenos Aires; title: Mallo's return to Madrid. Madrid in the 1960s; title: The end of the Franco dictatorship and the recovery of the avant-garde; title: The 1980s : Mallo's descent into darkness; title: An appraisal of Mallo at the turn of the 21st century.