The Spanish Civil War and the Dominican exile in the painting of Vela Zanetti

Abstract

The Spanish Civil War caused the largest diaspora of contemporary Spain. Within the consequences of this dispersion, this paper proposes to analyze the transformations that took place in the painting of muralist José Vela Zanetti. However, in order to delineate the artist’s progress and the different painting techniques that he assumed in the Dominican Republic, where his mandatory exile took him, it is important to start from the stage that preceded it, both at a personal level and at that of changing contexts. Methodologically, this paper is approached from the viewpoint of social and cultural history, with two basic conceptual pillars: transculturation and cultural transfer. The analysis of numerous sources has allowed us to learn about the multiple influences and feedbacks that occurred from the perspective of the exile and the host country, so as to stimulate debate about the artistic transformations of exiled painters and Dominican artists in 1940’s.