The Spanish War (2003)
Series of 117 drawings. Ink on paper Courtesy: The Burger Collection, Zúrich/Hong Kong & Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
Fernando Bryce uses drawing as a tool to copy covers and inside pages of period newspapers, magazines and other printed materials. His “mimetic analysis” starts out from the idea of the archive to examine issues related with history and memory, how certain facts and situations have been transmitted and understood at a specific moment in time, and making them newly present through his drawings. On show here are two series of interconnected works. The first, The Spanish Revolution, is a series of 21 drawings of the covers of the English version of the newspaper POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, or Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), published between 1936 and 1937. In the second, titled The Spanish War, he compiles and draws an extensive archive of the Civil War including pamphlets, calendars, portraits.
