Towards a new national image: The pictorial and poetic surrealism of the post Spanish Civil War years

This dissertation provides an essential study of two groups of poets and painters responsible for rejuvenating the Surrealist movement in Spain during the 1940s and early 1950s, and consequently initiating literary and artistic advancements that would last throughout the twentieth century. A close examination of the works and activities of "Dau al Set" and "El Postismo" is crucial for understanding the extensive and often overlooked cultural environment of these post Civil War years. Considered the bridge between pre Civil War culture and that of future Spanish artists and poets, "Dau al Set" and "El Postismo" re-took the surrealist tendencies that flourished in the pre-war years, and transformed it into a post Surrealism. While the Surrealist movement has long been debated in Spain, "Dau al Set" and "El Postismo" demonstrated what pre Civil War groups lacked. As artists and poets, they created "pure" surrealists works and achieved results that reflected a truer surrealist nature than those of their Spanish predecessors. At the same time, they were the link to the international vanguard, especially the artists of "Dau al Set," who became recognized, not only in Madrid and Barcelona, but outside of Spain as well.;"Dau al Set" and "El Postismo" redefined the connections between surrealist art and literature through their ambitious experiments with both fields. In this dissertation I examine certain metaphors common in surrealist poetry and relate them to an interartistic comparison of surrealist poetic and pictorial images. Through this approach, I am able to establish connections between the types of surrealist images the two groups produced in order to provide a deeper awareness and understanding of Spain's cultural aesthetic norms during these years. This examination of surrealist painting and poetry in Spain provides a model for re-discovering essential interdisciplinary connections between groups of artists using visual and verbal comparative studies. Above all and most significantly, this study confirms the effectiveness of "Dau al Set" and "El Postismo" in stimulating a new national image for Spain and demonstrates their important contribution to Surrealism in and outside of the Iberian peninsula.