Document Type

Research Paper

Publication Date

Spring 2026

First page number:

1

Last page number:

18

Abstract

During the eve of the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939) Alfonso Ponce de León, a Falange propagandist and artist, created Autorretrato (1936), a self-portrait inspired by an automobile accident he experienced. He exhibited this work several months before his arrest, torture, and execution by Republican forces. This paper analyzes the self-portrait as a fascist work of self-victimization and ideological myth-making in line with fascist propaganda of the time. The painting presents Ponce de León as a dead or dying figure staged through the visual language of Catholic martyrdom. Drawing from Baroque compositional practices and iconographic tropes associated with the suffering of saints, Autorretrato transforms personal injury into a premeditated narrative of heroic sacrifice. Through close formal analysis and comparison with works by artists such as Caravaggio and Jusepe de Ribera, this paper argues that Ponce de León deliberately positions himself as a fascist martyr, anticipating and aestheticizing his own death in service of Falangist ideology. Situating the painting within the Falange’s adoption of Italian fascists’ cult of the fallen and other traditions of fascist sacralized politics, the study frames Autorretrato as propaganda that mobilizes victimhood as a paradoxical source of power. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates how Ponce de León’s self-portrait enacts a fascist fantasy of persecution and transcendence, revealing how personal experience, Catholic visual culture, and fascist politics converged in the artist’s practice to construct narratives of destiny, heroism, and self-sacrifice. The research for this paper began as a deep dive into the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Surrealist movement of that time. There were notable artists active throughout the war in the main rival factions, the Republicans and Nationalists led by Francisco Franco—the left and right, respectively and superficially. The paper began growing as an investigation on artist mobilization during war times, on both sides. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Juana Francisca Rubio, and Alfonso Ponce de León, and their actions were analyzed to determine how they used their artistic practice when interacting with the war. Because there is a strong comparison to be made between the rise of fascism pre-World War II and the present, the topic was necessary to understand an artist’s role during such times. Alfonso Ponce de León stood out among the artists, not only because of the symbolism in his masterwork, Autorretrato, but also because of the lack of information on such an important figure in terms of wartime propaganda. Ponce de León, as claimed by Spanish newspapers, was the head propagandist for the ultraright group, Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, popularly truncated to simply Falange. His artwork was lost to time after the Spanish Civil War, only coming back to audiences in the late 90s and then displayed in 2001 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía for an exhibition accompanied by an in depth retrospective catalog. Although the exhibition catalog is out of print, scholar Rob Stradling wrote the valuable text “Inspired Neglect? Three Fascist Artists of the Spanish Civil War” found inside the book The Spanish Civil War: Exhuming a Buried Past. This, along with multiple other peer-reviewed articles and sources analyzing Falangist fascism and Ponce de León’s work, gave the research some clarity and a path toward understanding an impactful yet not well known artist in his contextual art history. This research is timely because of the growing wave of American fascism. Although many may refuse to see it as such, art is a political way of communication. Audiences should be able to understand the views of an artist through the symbolism and motifs in their artwork especially in times of unrest or war.

Controlled Subject

Spanish Civil War (Spain : 1936-1939); Surrealism--Political aspects; Self-portraits, Spanish

Disciplines

European History | History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology | Political History | Theory and Criticism

File Format

PDF

File Size

1710 KB

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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