Darkness

The Spanish Civil War, an event that undoubtedly marked a before and after in international contemporary history, represents one of the key processes of the period between the two world wars and announces the crumbling of Western reason that would occur throughout the Second War. These borderline experiences call into question any certainty and are the trigger for a new aesthetic program for many artists, among them Raquel Forner. The heroic stage of modernity and its project of indefinite progress had come to an end. Times of melancholy, ominous omens and a sense of profound bewilderment in the face of everyday life were approaching. In this context, "Tinieblas" is presented as a visual essay in which the artist revisited the construction of confusing landscapes overshadowed by the atmospheric density following an explosion, in which the earth, the trees, the vestiges of architecture and human beings, as well as the four women who star in the scene, are what give way to this panorama of horror: a dense synthesis between the exterior landscapes of devastation and the interiors of desolation, hopelessness and bewilderment in the face of an alienated world. The woman, in this as in most of Forner works, is the exclusive protagonist: she is the one who stands, who picks up the remains, laments and, at the same time, resists, she is the only one able to see ahead, to point to a future in the midst of darkness and devastation. She is the pain of that war, but at the same time the pain of all.