Born in 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, in Andalusia, Federico García Lorca was a major poet. But beyond the poet, a number of other Lorcas exist. There was the artist-draftsman, the inspired musician, and the man of the theater, a playwright, actor, and director. Lorca’s body of work is stamped by many popular traditions as well as a visionary avant-gardism. It exceeds any simple chronological reading and offers a corpus as singular and contrasting as Blood Weddingand Play Without a Title, The House of Bernarda Alba and The Public, Yerma and When Five Years Pass, Gypsy Ballads and Poet in New York…

A successful author from the start of his career, Lorca embodied a radical freedom that was provocative as well, probably without his wanting it to be. He defended with complete conviction and a deep love of the theater the idea that culture has the power to change society. Innovative and revolutionary, his theater transformed the stage into a free forum that gave rise to truths, emotions, and sentiments that thoroughly shook up the mindset in Spain in the 1930s. Assassinated by the fascists in August of 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War, Lorca figures among those fleeting lives, those shooting stars whose dazzling brilliance leaves a lasting impression. That bright light has allowed the poet’s words to reach us through a range of languages and cultures, touching us still with their miraculously contemporary resonance.

Five great themes run through Lorca’s work for the stage, i.e., love, the passionate quest for the other, and its corollary disenchantment; the solitude his characters irredeemably fall into; masks and the protection of hypocrisy; theater as a great metaphor for falsehood; and finally death, in its intense contrast with life.

The exhibition Federico García Lorca en scène – Frederico García Lorca on stage – explores these themes in Lorca’s writing for the theater and goes over the history of the plays’ successes and failures through a selection of archival materials, including manuscripts, first editions, posters, programs, drawings, costumes, sets, films and photos. These vestiges of a life made up of real voyages and inner journeys, suffused with poetry and overflowing with generosity, are an attempt to grasp the music, colors and sensibility of Lorca, to grasp the ungraspable: genius.

with the Fundación Federico García Lorca