Born in 1898 in the small farming community of Fuente Vaqueros near Granada, in Spain, the poet Federico García Lorca was a highly influential surrealist companion to Dalí .
Considered Spain’s greatest poet and dramatist, during the 1920s he joined the cohort of avant-garde artists that included Dalí and Luis Buñuel. The group, known as the “Generation of ’27,” introduced Lorca to Surrealism, a movement that would greatly influence his writings.
It was his poetry that gave him his fame, with the publication of Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads) (1928), Lorca received the attention of critics which was to drive him on the path the success.
This week is Lorca’s birthday, this year his Gypsy Ballads are is 90 years old.
Lorca came to a sad end being executed by right wing forces in 1936., he was considered Spain’s greatest poet and dramatist.
Lorca met Dalí in 1919 almost 100 years ago, Dalí later designed the scenery for some of Lorca’s play Mariana Pineda in 1921. During the 1920s he became part of the left wing surrealist group of which Dalí was part.
The Spanish civil war which began in 1936 was a bloody and violent conflict which left over one million citizens dead; anticipating the second world war which began in 1939. The Spanish Civil War and Lorca’s death, mobilized many artists and intellectuals to take up arms.
Among the most notable artistic responses to the war were the novels Man’s Hope (1938) by André Malraux, The Adventures of a Young Man (1939) by John Dos Passos, and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway; George Orwell’s memoir Homage to Catalonia (1938); Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
