European Avant-Garde Movements: A Post-WWI Analysis
European Avant-Garde Movements After World War I
After the First World War, a new understanding of art emerged in Europe, lasting until the Second World War. The most committed movements encompassed several key characteristics:
- Simultaneity: International movements that appear and disappear quickly.
- Antitraditionalism: Vigorously defending originality and rejecting the past.
- Experimentation: Breaking language rules, mixing text with icons.
- Irrationalism
- Independence: The poet translates the apparent reality, and the external world is independent.
- Elitism: Modernists address a cult audience rather than the masses.
- Autotelic: The work is an end in itself.
Expressionism
Expressionism arose in Germany before the First World War. Through willful deformation and caricature, it highlighted aspects closest to the war and social injustice. Samuel Beckett’s mechanistic approach with the ‘shout box’ exemplifies this.
Futurism
Founded by Marinetti in 1909 with a manifesto against tradition, Futurism exalted technology. It produced changes in language, such as deleting adjectives, punctuation, and links, and using onomatopoeia. It sought new effects in typography. In Spain, futuristic writers began writing poems based on technical innovations. For example, Pedro Salinas’ poem describes a machine using metaphors. Futurism in Spain was not as successful as in Italy. Another poem describes a lady enclosed in a glass bulb.
Surrealism
André Breton created a new logic fed by images from the subconscious. The poet enters a trance where unconscious associations occur, described through automatic writing. This procedure seeks a release of self and a cathartic confession to disturb society. Surrealism uses automatic writing to access the subconscious and provide images, requiring a vision of the world. Automatic writing involves the association of words and exquisite corpses.
Common Keys of the Generation of ’27
- Influence of Góngora: A sign of fervor for the Baroque poet. Góngora was viewed as a pure writer, dedicated to poetic creation, emphasizing metaphor and image.
- Influence of Juan Ramón Jiménez: Evident in the formal purification, suppression of anecdote, search for precision of expression, elimination of pathos, and tendency toward intellectualization.
- Neopopularism: Using forms and rhythms (ballads, seguidillas, chorus) as stylistic resources. Neopopularism connects to aesthetic perfection, simplicity, and suggestion.
- Importance of Avant-Gardes: Cosmopolitan, jovial, playful, provocative, and ingenious. Admiration for Góngora and the Baroque is essential. Seeking balance between tradition and avant-garde, giving access to human themes.
Writers: Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, Gerardo Diego, Vicente Aleixandre, Federico García Lorca, Emilio Prados, Rafael Alberti, and Luis Cernuda.