They Still Draw Pictures: Children's Art in Wartime from the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo [Paperback]

Anthony L. Geist (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2002

'A drawing or a painting is a soul's message eagerly sought by us watchful onlookers', Robert Coles observes in his foreword to this striking volume. 'The point is to demonstrate what has been imagined, or yes, witnessed ...[and] for us to be shown something by certain boys and girls who become our teachers'. Bearing powerful testimony to Coles' message, "They Still Draw Pictures" collects and comments on a cross-section of children's art produced in wartime, with a particular focus on the Spanish Civil War. Of the 600,000 refugees who sought shelter from Franco's tyranny in the relative security of Republican-controlled eastern Spain, more than 200,000 were children. The Republic responded to this crisis by establishing colonias infantiles (children's colonies), often in country estates and mansions that had been abandoned by fascist sympathizers. In these colonies, the young refugees - many of them orphaned or sent by their parents to safety - received schooling and medical care, kept each other company, and produced thousands of drawings that serve as a moving, collective testimony of the experience of being a child in wartime. Born of the trauma of exile and separation, the drawings are invaluable historical documents, giving physical form to the children's experiences of air raids, brutality, destruction, and homelessness. These pictures also represent daily life in the colonies and preserve the children's clear memories of life before the war and hope for life after it. They are supplemented by a smaller selection of drawings from later wars, showing that this problem is contemporary as well as historical. 'Once I drew like Rafael', Picasso said, 'but it has taken me a lifetime to draw like a child'. Deceptively transparent, these drawings speak with a poignant immediacy of war's consequences for its youngest victims'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A moving collection of youngsters' art reflecting wartime violence and suffering." -- Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (February 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252070267
• ISBN-13: 978-0252070266
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Secret Life of Children's Art, March 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: They Still Draw Pictures: Children's Art in Wartime from the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo (Paperback)

Always I like being around when children draw. So authors Anthony I Geist and Peter N Carroll get my attention right away when they say that children's art tells us what children go through and see. The examples in THEY STILL DRAW PICTURES show what children zero in on from going through war, from the Spanish civil war of the 1930s, to the Holocaust of the 1930s-1940s, to the Kosovo bloodbath of the 1990s.

All too often what affects children becomes common knowledge, only by way of adults drawing, talking and writing. Yet respected artist, biographer, historian and psychoanalyst Erik H Erikson says that how children feel and think is there for anyone to see in their art. Just look at what the body parts and faces are doing, what colors are used, what things fill up the spaces.

An especially chilling example are children's drawings of German bombers destroying the Spanish Basque city of Guernica. Experts know the exact models being flown, just from children's drawings!

In fact, children's wartime art always tells the same story in the same way. First there's life before the war, such as at a grandmother's house or with a family dog savoring a bone. Next come the war scenes, such as of a soldier whipping a man lashed to a tree. Then there's evacuation, such as of a roadside full of tiny stick figures. And then there's the life in refugee camps, such as of the children playing outside a building while smoke billows from the chimney or of the colony dining room. Finally there's life after the war, such as of a 10-year old girl sitting in the grass, with open book in hand.

The book is clearly organized and interestingly written. It reads well with Ismail Kadare's CHRONICLE IN STONE. It shows well with two videos, JEUX INTERDITS and HOPE AND GLORY.