Franco's Secret Caricatures

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• Antonio Saura, painter of sadness and rebellion
• Fascination by Saura

They're just drawings, lies and Franco's dream. But seen in perspective crystallize in a reckoning.

As cruel as it is cheesy in that admirable exercise of political travesty — in sum: The Militarcillo Gallego, mediocre and Meapilas become a national dictator, calculating and bloodthirsty in long term after national carnage that we all know — Francisco Franc Bahamonde gave for much at time of satire and sarcasm.

Especially after he died, because fact is that before he left a lot of leeway. From re probably painter Antonio Saura decided, once pergeñado his brilliant scrawl of triumphant francoism, put it in some folders and put folders in depths of anonymous drawers. Lie and Frank's dream, but under seven locks.

Franco's portrait of series ' Lie and Dream of Franco ', by Antonio Saura. Files ANTONIO SAURA

And because revenge is a dish that is served cold — although much of history of this country clearly tells opposite — suite of 41 drawings that Saura (Huesca, 1930-Cuenca, 1998) has executed between 1958 and 1962 now comes to light. It was a hidden little treasure that had never been neir edited nor exposed in public as a whole.

It is a political pamphlet in wake of Goya and Picasso (Disasters, dream and lie of Franco, Guernica ...) with which co-founder of El Paso Group, who had not yet gone to live in Paris definitively, wanted to position himself with respect to Franco and its consequences. Primarily, Civil war.

A book of imminent publication, Lie and Dream of Franco (Georg Editor/Archives Antonio Saura) and, above all, an exhibition next year at Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, whose details are being finalized, will realize this antifrancoic cry made in Pencil and ink China just when you meet 20 years of artist's death.

Victims of Civil war

"The suite that my far dedicates to Francoism and Spanish Civil war is indeed a denunciation of terrible historical events that both marked him, as well as a combative tribute, with painter's modest weapons, to his victims", explains from Geneva Marina Saura, daughter of artist and responsible for texts of book toger with French historian Bartolomé Bennassar and Spanish painter Eduardo Arroyo.

Portrait of Millán-Astray of series ' Lie and Dream of Franco ', by Antonio Saura. Files ANTONIO SAURA

Remember daughter and heir to artist and responsible for archives Antonio Saura of Geneva: "We found drawings in a drawers of his studio in Paris, when we were doing inventory of his work." They were stored in a folder along with a typed list of titles. That list has been very useful, because many of titles he wrote about drawings were an enigma, messages quite cryptic, some were pure poetic associations; Ors, Songs of war, slogans ... and also my far had a very difficult letter to decipher. "Unraveling all this has been precisely task we have brought forward Bartolomé Bennassar and I."

The volume to publication point is pure acid. Along a hundred pages and behind colorful cover signed by Eduardo Arroyo — Franco, Franco, Franco, a collage with a photo of young soldier topped by a hallucinated eyes painted by Saura — Parade all possible interpretations of Dictator and Civil war. Franc crucified, franc driving a tank, franc with flaccid penis, franc fishing tunas (which are dead), Franco hailed in Burgos by national forces... but especially frightening visions of mass graves where dead rest Of losing side. And mockery derisory and merciless of Legion, with Millán astray in front, and of Carmen Polo of Franco, necklaces, with shawl, and of priests, and of face to sun and of Phalanx.

Until famous militiaman of Robert Capa riddled in Cerro Espejo is subject of a peculiar interpretation by Antonio Saura, who dedicates anor of his illustrations to that Sleeping Beauty (Spain) to which witch (FR) kept asleep 40 years ... The text that serves as a preamble to book is same as artist published in Book of 2009 Antonio Saura for himself.

In it, Saura shows his boredom before "aberrant and masochistic" version of some according to which art is better when a repressive situation is given than when re is freedom. "I have always thought," he writes, "that if in Spain we had enjoyed greater freedom and communication, art would have been much more fertile, truthful and universal."