SAVING THE TREASURES OF SPAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 148, 25 June 1938, Page 27

SAVING THE TREASURES OF SPAIN

A meeting of the Artists" International Association in London, with Lord Listowel in the chair, had as its principal speaker Mr. Luis Cernuda, the young Spanish poet, says the "Manchester Guardian." Mr. Cernuda during the civil war has been helping to combine the writers and artists of Spain for the people's education. He discussed, '"The arts in Spain today," dealing rather with the general artistic traditions of his country than with the condition of "the artist there at present. However, he emphasised the Spaniard's—and the Spanish artist's— passion for freedom, which, he Sjaid, had tallied the artists behind the Government He reminded his audience of Picasso's vast picture of Guernica, which, was in the Spanish pavilion at'the Paris Exhibition. He also said that, Solana, possibly...the greatest of artists in Spam, had been taken from Madrid to Valencia as soon as the attack on Madrid began, and" that. in.. Valencia there was now a "Casa de Cultura" where the artists were left to do their work in peace.

Sir Frederick Kenyon, who also spoke, said that, his was the more prosaic task of describing what steps

were actually being taken In Government Spain to preserve the works of art. He had gone there in August of last year at the invitation, of the Government. If was evident that at the start of the war there had been much destruction, particularly of church interiors and church furniture. It was equally evident that: such vandalism was against the wishes, of the people generally and had been done by gangs of anarchists. In Catalonia the principal method of preservation had been that of removing- the art treasures. The contents of the Barcelona museum, for instance, had been takenvto the village of Olot, in the Pyrenees, where they were safe. Similarly, the big pictures of the Prado in Madrid had been removed to the Torres de Serranos, in Valencia, where they were relatively safe. In Madrid, however, the chief method was not removal but concealment in a local repository. The chief repositories were the Prado itself, the archaeological museum, and the church of San Francisco el Grande. These places were safe, except against direct hits from large bombs or from a repetition of the conditions which had existed at the start of he war.