Professorship, Open Workshop, People’s School: Attempts for teaching engraving in Cordoba (1936-1943)

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the specific role played by different initiatives for teaching engraving in Cordoba, within a broader study about modern art in the city, between 1936 and 1943. The Provincial Academy of Fine Arts, although by then it had been open for four decades, didn’t have space, nor equipment, nor specialized staff to teach and learn engraving techniques. Instead, different groups and artist associations took on the task of opening workshops, schools and journals dedicated to the discipline, and demanded recognition in official institutions for their work and innovations. In addition, the artists conceptualized the potentialities graphic arts had to synthesize forms and ideas. This features would indicate that engraving was at the core of a modern experience characterized for a constructive volition, which is to say related to the project of tie up new forms and artistic institutions.