Juan Larrea
The poet and writer Juan Larrea Celayeta (Bilbao, 1895 – Córdoba, Argentina, 1980) moved to Paris in 1926, where he would live until the end of the Spanish Civil War and before his exile in Mexico, the USA, and finally Argentina. As a secretary on the Spanish Embassy’s Board of Cultural Relations in France during the Second Republic, he gained first-hand insight into the Spanish government’s project for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937, and worked on international propaganda and aid campaigns for the Spanish people.
From the very start of Juan Larrea’s literary career he had strong associations with Vicente Huidobro, from whom he learned the nature of experimental and creationist poetry, and ties to the Generation of ’27, particularly through his friendship with Gerardo Diego. Hard to classify in terms of historiography, Larrea is a key figure in Spanish Surrealism who was also welcomed into French Surrealism, and during his prolonged stint in Paris he struck up friendships with artists and writers, combining his embassy obligations with his literary vocation. He founded the magazine Favorables París Poema, with César Vallejo, and worked with Luis Buñuel writing film texts and scripts, for instance his story in “oneiric prose”, Ilegible, hijo de flauta (Illegible, Son of the Flute, 1927–1928), which would never be filmed.
Larrea was among those who visited Picasso while the artist was working on his great painting for the Spanish Pavilion — from that moment on, one of the biggest emblems of not only the Spanish Civil War but the entire 20th century. He was involved in providing aid to refugees and victims of war and worked with Roland Penrose to organise the fundraising tour of Guernica and its preparatory drawings around different cities in England, attended by the Labour Party, trade unions and international aid associations supporting the Spanish people. Larrea also attended, while in exile, the unveiling of the Picasso exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, and later rendered an account to the artist through his letters. In 1947, the New York gallerist Curt Valentine published an essay by Larrea entitled Guernica: Pablo Picasso, in Picasso’s opinion one of the finest interpretations ever written. The essay was translated into Spanish in 1977 and played a large part in the painting’s return to Spain.
Larrea’s work as a poet, barely published in his lifetime, most notably included Oscuro dominio (Dark Domain, 1934) and Versión celeste (Celestial Version, 1970). Throughout his prolonged political exile, he wrote essays and poetry, studying Latin American poets such as César Vallejo and Pablo Neruda, among others, and contributed to magazines and publications, submitting teleological and visionary themes of the human condition. He lived in Mexico from 1940 to 1947 and, following a spell in the United States, settled in Córdoba, Argentina, where he worked as the director of the Institute of the New World, affiliated with the university in the same city. His diaries and extensive correspondence have subsequently been retrieved and published, and most notably include the essays and texts: El surrealismo: entre viejo y nuevo mundo, Del surrealismo a Machu-Pichu, Ángulos de visión, La religión del lenguaje español and Diario del nuevo mundo. Larrea, an enthusiast of primitive cultures and magical thinking, donated to the government of the Republic, in 1937, his diverse collection of Inca art, which is currently housed in Madrid’s Museo de América.
