FOLK ART: The Spanish Tradition - Spanish folk art - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1999 by Marion Jr. Oettinger, Tracy Baker-White

"The unique blending of cultural traditions that have played a part in Spain's history--Celtic, Roman, Germanic, Moorish, French, and American--gives it an unusually rich variety of folk styles."

Spain's long tradition of producing folk art continues to play an important role in the life and culture of its people today. Frequently, these folkways are woven so tightly into the fabric of Spanish life that they are hardly recognizable to those who use them on a daily basis.

The unique blending of cultural traditions that have played a part in Spain's history--Celtic, Roman, Germanic, Moorish, French, and American--gives it an unusually rich variety of folk styles.

Folk art is everywhere. It is rural and urban, secular and religious. It is made by Spaniards for Spaniards and is integrated into virtually every aspect of daily life. For hundreds of years, folk art has been used to court lovers, amuse children, and honor ancestors. It is an expression of a people's fears and dreams. In modern times, folk art continues to be an important device for relating to the physical, social, and spiritual worlds.

Utilitarian. Most utilitarian folk art in Spain, as elsewhere in the world, is made to satisfy the daily practical needs of those who produce it. Examples include ceramic vessels to hold wine or olive oil, chairs for resting, wooden trunks to store prized textiles, and thousands of other items in the Spanish home. Few folk artists, however, are content to limit their craft to satisfying just the practical need. Most embellish their objects in special ways, using symbols, decorative patterns, and imagery. The particular usage of decorative motifs is the artist's "signature," though variations occur at the community level, as seen in regional textiles and ceramics.

Ceremonial folk art, which can be either religious or secular, is a highly visible and dramatic form of folk expression. It is used to communicate with the saints, maintain the continuity between the living and dead, celebrate the passage of the seasons, acknowledge life's stages, and strengthen ties with family, community, and nation. Most religious folk art from Spain and Latin America is related to the ceremonies and ritual celebrations of the Catholic church. Religious celebrations are tied to the annual ritual calendar as well as to each particular community's history and circumstance. Some events, like the pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago at Compostela, draw millions of people from all over Spain and elsewhere. Other celebrations are more local or personal in nature.

Popular graphics. Examples of 18th-20th century graphics include book illustrations, praise poems or aleluyas, programs for theatrical skits to be done between acts of a larger drama (called entremeses), lyrics for songs, and "broadsides" or fliers meant to be passed out at fairs and festivals or pasted on building exteriors. Broadsides were used as pictographic teaching devices covering the lives of the saints, religious morality lessons, and secular subjects such as the professions, or even the ABC's. Subjects for entremeses included romances, comedies, song lyrics, etc. These woodcuts, engravings, and etchings provide a window on Spanish life of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

It is possible to make direct comparisons of Latin American folk an and Spanish antecedents. While some examples like the cuemo, or carved horn pieces, show a clear correspondence, others assume a distinctly Americanized form. For example, take San Isidro, the patron saint of Madrid. In a painting from 19th-century Bolivia, he is transformed from a 12th-century Spanish farmer into a Bolivian rancher, towering over scenes of Andean mountains and tropical jungles filled with South American flora and fauna. Mestizos, Indians, and African-Americans are seen in the foreground.

Meanwhile, Our Lady of Montserrat was adopted by the people of Puerto Rico, and miracles of her appearance in the Americas became part of her iconographic identity. She is believed to have saved a farmer from a raging bull, and this scene commonly is represented on the base of her icon by Puerto Rican carvers.

Latin American and Spanish folk art forms are interwoven closely as a result of the inevitable blending of cultural traditions that took place during the European colonization of the Americas. Within the first 100 years after Europeans arrived in the Americas, three-quarters of the indigenous population died from disease and warfare. With this depopulation, many pre-Hispanic traditions were lost, to be replaced by the culture of the new rulers. In some cases, Spanish folk traditions were assimilated directly into Latin American culture with little change. Other forms were enriched or altered by the people of the Americas.

Regardless of origin, folk an represents a collective spirit. It is a communal, rather than personal, expression, and has a unique ability to convey the human drama that is passed from generation to generation, parent to child, mentor to protege. Folk an is truly arte popular. It does not seek to be avant-garde, but, instead, strives to reflect the mainstream beliefs, tastes, customs, and values of the community in which it was made and used. In this sense, folk an is the most democratic of an forms.