Literary Avant-garde and the Generation of ’27 in Spain

Posted on Jun 3, 2025 in Philology

The Avant-garde: A Revolution in Art and Literature

The avant-garde artistic movements, which developed in the early twentieth century, revolted against the conception of art based on the imitation of reality. They embraced a taste for the exceptional and the strange, a legacy of symbolism. Their ideological and aesthetic programs spread through manifestos and magazines.

Key Characteristics of Avant-garde Movements:

  • Anti-realism and Autonomy of Art: In poetry, anecdote and sentiment were eliminated, pursuing the ideal of pure poetry and the goal of creating purely poetic worlds.
  • Irrationalism: A desire for poetry itself to be based on the potentiation of the image.
  • Passion for Originality: They sought beauty in the different or original, defending individualism. It was often considered a niche art.
  • Aesthetic Experimentation: The development of painting attracted avant-garde poets, who came to conceive of the poem as a visual object.

European Avant-garde Movements:

  • Futurism: Arose in Italy, founded by writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. His first manifesto proclaimed anti-romanticism and extolled mechanical and urban civilization, along with new technologies. It called for a total renovation of poetic language.
  • Cubism: Associated with artists like Pablo Picasso, it involved the decomposition of reality into geometric shapes. It offered a new way of looking at the real world, involving the juxtaposition of multiple perspectives.
  • Surrealism: Founded by André Breton, it was influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud. The goal of Surrealists was to search for true reality by exploring the unconscious, which emerges when reason does not control instincts, as happens in dreams. They were also influenced by Karl Marx and called for liberation from societal norms imposed by capitalist society. Techniques like automatic writing were employed, which involved writing everything that came to mind, favoring the unconscious through images and symbols.

Spanish Avant-garde Movements:

  • Ultraism and Creationism: The Ultraists postulated the suppression of narrative and emotional elements, which they only accepted through the prism of irony and symbolism. Creationists recovered the intention of creating the reality of the poem itself, aiming to excite the reader.

The Generation of ’27: Synthesis of Art and Tradition

The year 1927 marked the tercentenary of the death of Luis de Góngora, a significant event for this group of poets. Among the outstanding poets of the group were: Pedro Salinas, Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, and Dámaso Alonso. With their cosmopolitanism and openness to contributions from Europe and America, the poets of the Generation of ’27 valued and rescued past authors and styles, achieving a true synthesis of avant-garde art and literary tradition.

Key Themes of the Generation of ’27:

  • Love: Presented as plenitude, often with a sense of liberty that could lead to pain.
  • The Universe, Fate, Death, and Humanity: Central concerns in the works of the ’27 poets.
  • Freedom: A principle encompassing all individual experiences. The city, for example, was steeped in optimism, but also revealed the downsides of urban development.
  • The Arts: Influenced by literary safeguards, art itself became a topic of poetic creation.
  • Nature: Conceived as an environment that becomes part of the poetic experience.

Poets from the Generation of ’27 cultivated the image and the visionary image, combining traditional metric forms with free verse to achieve rhythm.

Stages of the Generation of ’27:

  1. First Stage (Early Avant-garde Influence): This period coincided with the splendor of the avant-garde movements. Although the ’27 poets did not reject the literary past, they achieved an equilibrium between avant-garde art and tradition, cultivating pure poetry.
  2. Second Stage (Personal Crises and Commitment): Authors such as Lorca, Alberti, and Cernuda experienced personal crises and found a way to translate their conflicts through Surrealism. They felt the influence of Pablo Neruda, who advocated for an impure, committed poetry that prioritized communication over an ideal of beauty.
  3. Third Stage (Disintegration and Exile): The Generation of ’27 as a group dramatically disintegrated. One member was killed (referring to Lorca), others were forced into exile, and some remained in Spain. They continued the theme of commitment, although they followed different paths.