The famous Spaniard Federico Garcia Lorca in the art of the twentieth century has long become one of the most significant figures. His legacy went beyond the framework of national culture and determined the main paths for the development of artistic creativity not only in literature, but also in painting, music, theater and cinema. Lorca’s poems have been translated into many languages of the world.
From the biography of the poet
Federico Garcia Lorca was born on June 5, 1898 in the small town of Fuente Vaqueros, the municipal center of the province of Granada. There the childhood and youth of the poet passed. Bright and versatile talents of the young man were noticed very early, which allowed young Federico to actively participate in the life of the provincial art community.
At the University of Granada, Garcia Lorca studied several courses at once - jurisprudence, philosophy and literature. At nineteen, a Spanish poet publishes his first collection of poems, Impressions and Landscapes. This book was marked by metropolitan criticism and brought him fame outside his native province.
In the capital
After moving to Madrid in 1919, Federico Garcia Lorca fell into the company of people, many of whom would later be called twentieth-century art classics. The most famous among them are Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. Lorca’s poems were known and in demand in the Spanish capital, which provided him with creative cooperation with the Eslava Theater. At the suggestion of the director of this team, Martinez Sierra, he writes the play "Witchcraft and Butterflies", which was successfully staged in 1920.
The poet is trying to combine stormy bohemian life with studying at the capital's university. Among his students, he was listed until 1928. All this time, the poet has been working hard in various genres. In the publishing houses of the capital, his poetic collections are published. The works of the young poet are read with interest by a wide variety of public, discussed and quoted in the press.
Avant-garde artist
For the Western European art world, the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century were an era of great change. Many traditional forms that have been established for centuries have undergone revolutionary rethinking and destruction. Along with his associates and associates, Federico Garcia Lorca was at the very center of this process. His biography is inextricably linked with the history of the artistic avant-garde. It is impossible not to note the mutual influence that the creators of the new art had on each other.
The works of the titans of the twentieth century - Salvador Dali,
Luis Bunuel, Pablo Picasso, Federico Garcia Lorca - would have looked different if these artists would have worked apart from each other. Characteristically, in addition to poetry and dramaturgy, the Spanish poet’s creative heritage also includes paintings and drawings.
"Gipsy romancero"
One of his most striking poetry collections, Garcia Lorca, dedicated the world of gypsy romance. In the traditional culture of the southern provinces of Spain, the gypsy component has always occupied a worthy place. But in the verses of Garcia Lorca, the characteristic images of the gypsy world were able to sparkle with new colors.
The freshness and unusualness of the poetry collection “Gypsy Romansero” published in 1928 consists in the fact that the poet managed to convey the usual figurative mythology of Gypsy folklore by expressive means of the artistic avant-garde of the early twentieth century.
In NYC
The desire to cross the ocean to one degree or another is experienced by many people in creative professions. A significant portion of the European intellectual elite found themselves on the other side of the Atlantic in anticipation of the impending catastrophe of World War II. But Federico Garcia Lorca went to America long before tank tracks rumbled along the roads of Europe. For the poet, this visit was an attempt to break through to new creative horizons. It is difficult to say how much his ideas were destined to be realized, but in New York the poet works hard and publishes new books.
For less than a two-year American period of his work, Garcia Lorca wrote the plays “The Public” and “When Five Years Pass”. And the lyrics of this period amounted to the poetry book "The Poet in New York." But the Spanish poet did not have to count on the significant success of his work in the English-speaking environment.
Return to Spain
In the early thirties, political turbulence was growing on the Iberian Peninsula. It was with this process that Federico Garcia Lorca's return from America coincided. But he returned to his homeland as a well-known writer and playwright, whose plays were invariably successful in many theaters. In 1931, the poet was asked to head the student theater "La Baccarat". Accepting this proposal, Garcia Lorca combines administrative activities with intense literary work. During this period, he wrote two plays that were included in the golden fund of Spanish literature - "The House of Bernarda Alba" and "Bloody Wedding". Ahead were many new ideas that were never destined to materialize.
Death of poet
In the fast-paced civil war throughout Spain, Federico García Lorca did not express sympathy for any of the warring parties. Perhaps he believed that by staying above the fight, you can feel safe on both sides of the barricade. But he managed to understand the full depth of his error only when it was already impossible to fix anything. Garcia Lorca knew very well that Granada was captured by the Spanish fascists when he went to his native province in August 1936. However, he did not attach significant importance to this fact.
There is very little reliable information about the poet’s last days. It is only known that he was arrested on August 16, 1936 and shot the next day by the sentence of the Governor of Granada, Valdes Guzmán. Extremely contradictory information about what was blamed on the poet. According to some sources, these are several poems with characteristic expressive surreal imagery. Allegedly, they insulted the religious and moral feelings of the fascist governor. And other sources claim that the poet was charged with non-traditional sexual orientation.
But today it is impossible to reliably find out not only what the charges against the poet were, but also where the place of his execution and the grave were. The poet’s body was not discovered in 2008 at the opening of the graves of the thirties. And this fact reinforces the existing version that Federico Garcia Lorca was not shot. It is impossible to exclude the possibility that the poet escaped death and then disappeared without a trace in the maelstrom of the civil war.