Recovered from the Enemy. Deposits at the MNAC Under Franco’s Dictatorship

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Image courtesy of Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

With this exhibition, the Museum is revisiting its own history and the history of its collections, now focusing on the works left by the SDPAN (Servicio de Defensa del Patrimonio Artístico Nacional), the Office for the Defense of National Artistic Heritage under Franco’s regime. This project is a continuation of the exhibition entitled Museum in Danger!, which made it possible to research and bring to light the extraordinary epic involved in safeguarding works of art during the Spanish Civil War.

Following the Republican defeat, the repositories established throughout the country by the Generalitat de Catalunya to protect works of art threatened by destruction passed into the hands of the victors, who created the SDPAN to manage them. This new entity once again used the Museum as a space to receive, safeguard and manage this cultural heritage.

As a result of this dual role as a museum and, at the same time, as an art repository, carried out both during and after the conflict, the Museu Nacional now preserves a collection connected to those actions to safeguard the artworks. The works presented in this exhibition are the 146 that the SDPAN left at the MNAC, a heterogeneous grouping that reflects their diverse origins. The expression “Recuperado del enemigo” (Recovered from the enemy), found on the labels of the frames, symbolized the manu militari imposition of a new political order in the sphere of art and heritage as well.

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Image courtesy of Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

The exhibition is based on the research conducted by the Institut Català de Recerca en Patrimoni Cultural on the impact of the Civil War on the configuration of the current collections of Catalan museums (IGUEMUS, PID 2021-124518NB-I00). This exhibition goes beyond a strict perspective based on solely on cultural heritage and is fully embedded in a vital policy of memory and transparency in the field of heritage. In this sense, it constitutes an exercise in research, which is still ongoing, that will be further developed in the Museum’s future expansion.

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