THE PROFESSIONAL IS POLITICAL: ARTISTIC WORK, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, AND MILITANCY IN LATE FRANCOISM

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct and contextualize some interconnected process and events managed by groups of anti-Francoist artists in the late sixties. Through unpublished documents and personal interviews, we want to recover the memory of the activities produced around the Painters' Cell of the Spanish Communist Party. This group encouraged the so called "Grupos de Trabajo de Madrid", who inspired the first artists' association, the I.(a) Exposicion libre y permanente, and the curriculum renovation in the Madrid School of Fine Arts (ESBA). In a methodological frame that pretend to read from the bottom up the cultural changes of the pre-transitional period, the referred activities could help us to think about the complex articulations between art and politics in late Francoism.