Salon des Artistes Français. Palacio de Bellas Artes. Municipio de Barcelona. Primavera 1917 (Hall of French Artists. Palace of Fine Arts. Municipality of Barcelona. Spring 1917)

In 1917, during the First World War, the Exposició d’Art Francès was held in the Palau de Belles Arts in Barcelona after a group of Catalan artists sent an invitation to the main artistic societies in France, taking advantage of the stalled exhibitions in Paris because of the war. The outcome was a show of more than 1,400 works from a selection of artists in diverse fields of specialisation and hailing from the three Parisian art salons, corresponding to the Société des Artistes Français, the Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d’Automne. It also included historical works such as tapestries and Impressionist paintings from collections such as the Musée du Luxembourg collection.
The event was firmly institutionalised owing to the involvement of the Council of Barcelona and the Junta de Museus (Museums Board), in addition to the French Fine Arts Administration and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs by way of the Propaganda Service. Therefore, the Barcelona exhibition became a showcase for French art under the protection of Catalan nationalism, which supported the allied forces of the Entente, at a time in which the central State found itself teetering in the balance of neutrality.
The chosen artist for the poster design was Lucien Simon, a French painter who trained in Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Simon opted for an academicist composition bearing conventional symbols of the nation: the rooster, representing France, and, in the foreground, the Republican figure of Marianne in the guise of a painter and wearing a Phrygian cap and dressed in the colour of the tricolour flag.

José Manuel Lara Oliveros