Since the Spanish Civil War the antifascist resistance configured models of struggle and collective organization. After the liberation the battle for freedom of the antifascist movement continued in the following decades as part of the struggles for decolonization, anti-imperialism, civil rights and anti-capitalism, especially in radical left movements, in which similar models of resistance continued to go on. These struggles strongly marked the period of the Cold War, during which interrelationships between antifascist movements and anti-colonial struggles took place (Westad, 2005; Ross, 2008). Their scope must be understood within a broader framework than that of the battle for sovereignty and national liberation, i.e. within an internationalist and transnational, collective and utopian project integrating multiple political subjects (workers, students, colonial subjects, women, artists, creators, intellectuals).
Despite the differences in contexts, the oral, written and visual productions of these actors, as well as the models of coexistence and utopian futures they have invented, can be seen as elements of a culture of resistance that links the Western world, socialist countries and the Third World. In this context, visual productions (visual arts, graphic art (poster), film and photography) played a key role. They have been a founding element in coordinating causes, objectives, collective imaginaries, dissident genealogies, as well as transmitting revolutionary memories.

Report

Program

Direction: Paula Barreiro López (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Coordination: Anita Orzes (Universitat de Barcelona)

International Research Workshop organized in the framework of the project  Ré.Part – Partisan Resistance(s): Visual culture, collective imagination and revolutionary memory (ANR-15-IDEX-02) of the Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes (LARHRA), with the support of La Maison de la création et de l’innovation and of Université Grenoble Alpes, as well as the project I+D+i MoDe(s)2 – Modernidad(es) Descentralizada(s): arte, política y contracultura en el eje transatlántico durante la Guerra Fría (HAR2017-82755-P).

Image: Saul Steinberg, 1967.