Bartolí i Guiu, Josep
Bartolí (Barcelona 1910 or 1911 – New York 1995) trained at the School of Arts and Crafts of La Llotja in Barcelona. Bartolí soon engaged with Barcelona's artistic and intellectual circles. Dailies and magazines frequently included caricatures, political cartoons, and satirical illustrations. Bartolí contributed satirical visuals reflecting the intense ideological struggles of the Spanish Civil War, fascism, and Nazism.[1]
In the 1950s and 1960s, Bartolí published hundreds of black and white editorial cartoons in the New York antifascist periodicals Ibérica and España Libre. Unlike his previous drawings of concentration camps with many dark strokes, exile caricatures are minimalist and straightforward, with elegant forms and simple, continuous lines. They are conceptual drawings that clearly express his authority as an editorial cartoonist, proven by the fact that his art was prominently displayed in these periodicals.
Josep Bartolí i Guiu’s graphic art covered news of Fascist Spain with the information provided by underground and global networks of dissidence. Bartolí’s satirical commentary contested the US Cold War narrative about Francisco Franco’s Spain as an ally of world peace and Christianity. His artistic production displayed a proletarian sensibility that mocked the many facets of Fascist Spain: the imperial rhetoric, the military life, the Spanish fascist party Falange, the cult of the unique leader, National Catholicism, censorship, and the socialization of youth. Furthermore, Bartolí’s visual language exposed Francisco Franco’s anti-intellectualism, elitism, corruption, and demagogic propaganda, thus breaking down mainstream notions of Spain for American readers. At the same time, he documented the US freedom fighters’ “good fight” for posterity.
I thank Bernice Bromberg, Josep Bartolí’s widow, for her authorization to preserve and publish Bartolí’s work.
[1] McGlade, Rhiannon. Catalan Cartoons: A Cultural and Political History. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016.
Also, see:
Feu, “Aesthetically Resilient: Josep Bartolí Guiu’s Political Cartoons in España Libre (1939-1977 NYC), a Spanish Civil War Exile Newspaper,” Debra D. Andrist (ed). The Body, Subject & Subjected. The Representation of the Body Itself, Illness, Injury, Treatment & Death in Spain and Indigenous and Hispanic American Art & Literature. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2016.
Feu, “The Will to Empire: Josep Bartolí’s Editorial Humor in New York Paper Ibérica.” in Americanized Spanish Culture: Stories and Storytellers of Dislocated Empires, eds Christopher J. Castañeda and Miguel Bota. New York: Routledge, 2022.
Froment, Aurélien (Aurel). (2020). Josep Le Film.
Garcia, Laurence. La retirada. Éxodo y exilio de los republicanos españoles (Trad. Isabel Pérez van Kappel). Madrid: El mono libre, 2020.
How to cite the exhibit: "Josep Bartolí" in Montse Feu. "Fighting Fascist Spain --The Exhibits." Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Digital Collections. http://usldhrecovery.uh.edu/exhibits/show/fighting-fascist-spain--the-ex. Accessed [DATE].
