On the Other Coasts 1936-39 Spanish Exiles in the Americas: Where Did the Song Go?

This exhibition is a collaborative project of the Permanent Observer Mission of Spain to the OAS and the OAS AMA, Art Museum of the Americas, showcasing the cultural output generated in the Americas as a result of the exchanges produced by Spanish exile during the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Francoist dictatorship. It is important to note that this is not an exhibition about exile per se, but about the artistic and intellectual products of that exile. This project encompasses works of art, literature, music, and cinema created by artists and intellectuals who migrated with their families to the Americas during the Civil War and the dictatorship, capturing their perspective, often laden with the search for social justice, democracy, and peace.

The works exhibited here reflect the world of these exiled artists who were forced to put down roots in different countries of the Americas. These artists represent many other Republican compatriots, defenders of Spanish democracy, victims of exile who experienced this human drama and found a new home on the American continent. As Neruda said about the Spaniards of the rescue expedition of the old freighter Winnipeg: "I felt in my fingers / the seeds / of Spain / that I myself rescued and scattered / over the sea, directed / to the peace / of the prairies."

The opening of the American borders to Spanish Republican exile meant a new life. The exhibition also includes works by other artists from the Americas and Spain whose creations are closely influenced by the artistic aesthetics generated. The exhibition presents around twenty works of art from the collections of the Art Museum of the Americas and the Inter-American Development Bank, contextualized with fragments of recordings from the PALABRA Archive of the Library of Congress of the United States of America, along with scores and documents from the era, safeguarded by the Columbus Memorial Library of the OAS.