The unknown Catalan who drew against Hitler

Barcelona"This is a miracle. We have discovered a great, previously unknown artist. The only Catalan and Spanish artist who worked extensively for British and Allied propaganda during the Second World War," says journalist Plácido Garcia-Planas, who curated the exhibition with historian Arnau González. Ink against Hitler, which can be seen at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) until January 11. The unknown artist is Mario Armengol Torrella (San Juan de las Abadesas, 1909–Nottingham, 1995), who worked for the British government from 1941 until the collapse of the Third Reich in the spring of 1945. He was much more useful to the Allies as a cartoonist. His drawings lay in boxes in the home of his son and two grandchildren for over thirty years. Now, for the first time, they can be seen by the Catalan public.

Both Armengol's drawings and his life are fascinating. The son of textile industrialists from Terrassa, he wanted to be an artist and refused to continue his family business. "He was a republican and a moderate leftist. Disillusioned with the Second Republic, after the May Events in 1937, he went into exile," explains González. He lived in Paris for a while, and when his father's support ran out, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. He went first to the Sahara and then was sent to Narvik, Norway, to fight the Nazis. He wasn't very skilled with weapons and was soon assigned to mapping. Shortly after, Armengol began working for the government to survive in the United Kingdom. "It was then, upon my arrival in the United Kingdom in the dark days of 1940, that they took my gun and, in exchange, the Ministry of Information offered me a pencil and paintbrush, in the belief that perhaps with those tools I would be better at hitting the bad guys of that time," Arm wrote.

Political Incorrectness

The cartoons mocking Hitler are a stunning snapshot of World War II. Some, today, would be described as politically incorrect and would be difficult to fit into most media. In one of the drawings, for example, you can see a large Russian war machine turning German soldiers into sausages. "It was sharp, bitter, caustic, with a typical Catalan humor, and without filters," says Garcia-Planas. When he received the commission from the British government, he had no experience as a cartoonist, but he was a talented draftsman. "In the exhibition, it may seem like there are three or four different cartoonists because Armengol was searching for his voice. He wasn't a caricaturist, he was an artist who made caricatures and drank from the Catalan doll tradition", adds the commissioner.

Armengol's work at that time must not have been easy. He drew pure war propaganda. He himself admitted it in 1943 in a writing in the magazine Lady"Political figures have made us see a man with sympathy or hatred, with disgust or even mockery, according to the need that political intention (he emphasizes) has for any of these feelings." Armengol couldn't talk, for example, about the privations of war or the German bombings of the United Kingdom. His caricatures were commissioned, but there was a very particular background and perspective behind them: they were very realistic works with clear contempt for dictators. There was an eschatological element of Catalan origin that censorship didn't always encounter. We don't know how many works they banned, but it is documented that they didn't dare publish Manneken Pis, the famous Brussels statue urinating on a German soldier's boot. Armengol was commissioned to mock Hitler's mustache and the swastika and laughed at Mussolini, whom he drew as a small child eager to play, and at Franco. The Spanish dictator was a small puppet who, depending on the moment during World War II, cleaned Hitler's boots or chased after a British lady.

"We know that Armengol's drawings reached from Haiti to New Zealand and, therefore, he had to look for universal cultural references and used everything from Wagner to Mickey Mouse," explains Garcia-Planas. However, it has not been easy to follow the trail of his drawings and check which newspapers he published in. "We will create a version of the catalogue in English and we hope that new research will be opened. He was unknown here or in the United Kingdom, or even in the University of Kent, which has the largest file of cartoonists", González points out.

He never returned to Catalonia

Armengol must have had talent because he published two little books with his work. Those three (1942) and According to plan. Armengol's war cartoons (1943). Both were reviewed and advertised in the British, Australian, and Catalan exile press. "There was a shortage of paper, and it was very difficult for a publisher to publish your book," Garcia-Planas notes. His meteoric career as a cartoonist ended on May 16, 1945, days after the capitulation of the Third Reich. The Catalan artist received a letter in which the ministry thanked him for his collaboration but discontinued his services. "He continued painting and sculpting throughout his life. In Calgary, there is a group of outdoor sculptures that were his, but he earned his living primarily by designing and decorating sets for the BBC. He never managed to make the kind of living he wanted to be," González explains.

He never returned to Catalonia, where his son, who knew him as an adult, and his two grandchildren grew up. "Many summers we went to see him, and in July 1987 he gave us two boxes with all these drawings," explains Gil Armengol, one of his two grandsons. "He was a magnetic man; he always left us spellbound with his stories," he adds. The drawings remained in boxes for three decades until Benet Armengol, Mario Armengol's son, spoke about them in Garcia-Planas after the exhibition on Antoni Campañà"It's great that they're appearing now because they humorously challenge us about the most fratricidal war in history; they're an invitation to reflect," he adds. The exhibition can be seen in parallel. Drawings from the National Museum. Sparks of War 1914-1918, which highlights works by Catalan cartoonists who captured the horror of the First World War through caricature.