Lorca and the archive. Memory in motion

A writer’s archive is a collection of history and possibilities. It is both the fertile soil from which emerge verse, prose and a constantly changing vision of his work, as well as the material trace of that work, of the lives of the writer, his family and friends. The holdings of the Fundación Federico García Lorca constitute the most complex and diverse archive among the many—both large and small—dedicated to the poet. Though it has been meticulously catalogued, to date no one has studied its history, its rich present, and the gaps left by war, exile, and state interventions.

Lorca and the Archive: Memory in Motion begins to recover this hitherto unknown story: the evolution of the archive from the moment of the poet’s death to the present day. As “Memory in Motion,” the exhibition—like the archive itself—foregrounds both the efforts of those who generated it and the sociopolitical contexts they navigated. It recounts for the first time the various stages that it went through: a story of loss and preservation, discovery and perseverance. Based on rigorous new research in personal, family, and state archives, it looks both to the past and toward new possibilities in the future.