ABSTRACT
This chapter maneuvers through the complex cultural history of early twentieth-century Spain up until 1936 in its search for examples, tendencies, or lineages of expressionism. It examines the only exhibition of expressionist art in Spain prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, in 1936, when much of the country’s creative production came to a halt. The chapter provides an account of Spain’s cultural landscape from 1900 to 1936 that explores the few direct references to expressionism in Spanish art and literature and addresses characteristics of expressionist art in contexts that have not hitherto been referred to as specifically expressionist. Spanish interest in the development of new aesthetic languages was evident in the multitude of avant-garde magazines, whose function—and the basis of their success—was to make visible in each moment that which was new and modern.
