Drawings made by Spanish Children during the Spanish Civil War

[Ferran]

Mandeville Special Collections Library
University of California, San Diego

“They Still Draw Pictures” includes a digital reproduction of the book with the same title, together with images of all of the children’s drawings held in the Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection, Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego. The book was first published in New York by the Spanish Child Welfare Association of America for the American Friends Service Committee in 1938; a reissue in the same year was published without the statement “for the American Friends Service Committee.” The Oxford University Press (New York) republished the work in the following year. Although each issue has a different binding, the contents are identical: an Introduction by Aldous Huxley, an Editor’s Note signed “J.A.W.” and sixty black-and-white reproductions of drawings.

The archive of original children’s drawings forms a portion of the Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection and comprises 609 pictures, drawn chiefly on cheap paper using pencil, crayon, ink, and sometimes watercolor; included are pictures that were subsequently published in the book.

Drawings by school children were collected from throughout Spain, and from refugee colonies in southern France, through a concerted effort by the Spanish Board of Education and the Carnegie Institute of Spain. Most drawings were gathered as bundles of loose pieces, but some schools submitted their collected drawings as bound booklets. Although war images predominate, many of the drawings represent bucolic, provincial, or personal themes completely removed from the military and political context in which they were created. All of the drawings bear captions, if only to identify the artist’s name or age; unless the text appears on the digital image itself, these captions have been transcribed (e.g., when text is found on the drawing verso). Translations of the text appear within brackets ([ ]).

The total number of drawings produced is uncertain, but those represented here comprise the bulk of those known to have survived. Some are undoubtedly in private hands. Institutional holdings include: Harvard University (sixteen drawings); the American Friends Service Committee Archives (20 drawings); the Drawings and Archives Collection, Avery Library, Columbia University (153 drawings). The Avery collection formed the focus of an exhibition at the Spanish Institute (New York, October 10 - December 31, 1986), which published an illustrated exhibition catalog: Children's Drawings of the Spanish Civil War: a Collection of 153 Drawings by Children Living in Refugee Colonies during the War (New York: Spanish Institute, [1986]).

http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/tsdp/index.html