War and art: the hidden story behind Zaldi

As a result of eight years of work, academics based in Canada, Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom launched the Online Museum of the Spanish Civil War. An international team of historians, archaeologists, humanities experts, and academics.

Zaldi is a sculpture by Xabier Lezama, sculpted in wood, which alludes to the 2,000 bombings in 400 days of the Civil War in the Basque Country. The work is found in the Cultural Heritage Preserved in the Encartaciones Museum, belonging to the General Boards of Bizkaia, and in the Virtual Museum of the Civil War of Spain.

Zaldi constitutes a “cry”, as the philosopher Gaston Bachelard said, a “life asleep in its form.” In it the cry is sealed, always heterogeneous with respect to the order of the discourse; always fissured, like a stigma, the work. As if the entire sculpture were an encapsulated invocation. Hoping to awaken in each present that is recognized in it. A kind of conductor of emotions: its quality does not lie in an aesthetic intention but in the feelings that give it substance. The later life of Zaldi as a totem, as an emblem of the community that emerged after the Second World War, cannot be surprising. In the world of Zaldi, which is above all a mythological world, the mouth opens in a desperate scream. That figure suffers in a space that is neither interior nor exterior, but rather somewhere literally uninhabitable. And yet, he seems to try to stand on the slightest ground to look at, even if he cannot understand, a horror that escapes his vulnerability. The desperate gesture of the figure. You can see what was happening in Spain, the sculpture contains at the same time destruction and renewal, despair and hope.

Historic context

The rebel aviation carried out more than 1,600 bombing operations in Euskadi between July 22, 1936, and the end of August 1937, which represents more than 2,000 bombings in a period of thirteen months. The most bloodthirsty operations on the Francoist side, which had the support of the aviation of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In the Civil War in what was then known as Euzkadi there were 2,042 attacks from July 22, 1936, four days after the coup d’état against the legitimate democratic regime of the Second Republic, until the rebel side took control of the Basque provinces. t was an unequal contest: Francisco Franco had on his side the powerful fleets of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, while the Republican side responded to the first attack by launching a bag of stones from a plane.

More than 40 bombers and 60 fighters flew almost daily over Basque land from March 31 to June 19, 1937, and carried out several attacks each day. The 1936 war was won from the air. This was stated by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, chief of staff of the Condor Legion. General Werner von Blomberg and Mussolini admitted in June 1937 that the fall of Bilbao had been fundamentally due to the action of German bombers. Hitler said the same thing in another way: “One thing is absolutely certain. People say that it was a divine intervention that decided the civil war in favor of Franco, but it was the intervention of the German general [Wolfram] von Richthofen and the bombs of his squadrons that rained from the sky that decided the matter. Given the total absence of republican aviation in Euskadi, the war in the air constituted a constant experiment on the nature, scope, effectiveness, and material effects of terror bombings. Consequently, Richthofen bombed as much as he could, where he could, as intensely as he could, and as effectively as possible. As he expressed in his diary, the terror bombing campaign that he launched in the spring of 1937 had a double moral and material effect on the Basque militias. From early in the morning, they bombarded the front positions for at least eight hours a day (“sunny day means rain of fire”). This generated extensive forest fires: Richthofen did not stop burning all the forests in his path with incendiaries. In the afternoons, the morale of the people was bombed through the systematic and daily attacks on urban centers. The high rate of aerial bombardment results in a large tonnage of bombs dropped. The Aviazione Legionaria launched more than 40,000 explosive and incendiary bombs in Euskadi between March 31 and the fall of Bilbao, which represents a minimum of 440 tons of explosives. The Condor Legion dropped a greater number of bombs and we must add the bombs dropped by the Northern Air Forces. All of this amounts to a minimum of 1,000 tons of bombs or a million kilos of explosives in two and a half months of war. An average of 12.5 tons per day. It is impossible to calculate the number of fatalities from these bombings, but the most conservative estimates point to many thousands.

Zaldi represents the Basque divinity which takes the form of a horse, appears in numerous legends, and in the historical context represents the episodes framed in the context of the Spanish Civil War. The terror bombings in Euskadi. His body is to the right, but his head is turned to the left. His head is raised and his mouth is open. It symbolizes the innocent victims of war. Its in-depth interpretation is the subject of controversy since the figure is symbolic and raises disparate opinions, but its artistic value is indisputable. Not only is it considered one of the artist’s most important works, but it has become a true symbol of the terrible suffering that war inflicts on human beings.

Currently, the museum is presented in English and Spanish. Its promoters – the professors of Contemporary History Adrian Shubert (from the University of York, Canada), Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez (from the University of Trent, Canada), and Joan Maria Thomàs (from the URV and the ISOCAC History, Society, Politics and Culture of consolidated research group Catalonia to the World); the archaeologist and professor Alfredo González Ruibal of the CSIC; Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, with technical support from Andrea Davis, Professor at Arkansas State University, and Dwayne Collins.

Patxi Xabier Lezama Perier is one of the Basque sculptors included in the Museum of the Spanish Civil War considered one of the main innovators of Basque sculpture. He grew up in the Franco dictatorship of Spain; An experience that marked him for life, and will also mark his art and his way of expressing himself. Far from the circuits, the artist’s work is essential to understanding Basque sculpture and the art of our time. The symbolic and the mythological. The awareness of the importance of Basque culture (its origin, its history, and its traditions), as well as the process of modernization of folklore by the avant-garde, provide a new look at ancestral issues. During the 80s he became especially interested in Basque mythology. Around 1990, with his job at the forge, he began working with iron. He began a cycle of non-imitative sculptures, increasing his concern for Basque art and culture. The scale of Totemism was addressed at the end of the 1980s in his ethno-cultural plastic investigation. The presence of mythical figures with a strong historical burden is very characteristic of his work. These are signs that reveal the weight of history and the mythical and literary elements of our cultural past.

14.10.2023 Stockholm