Maruja Mallo and the Interest in Children's Art in the Second Spanish Republic

A little-known article in the Spanish Republican journal Diablo Mundo (1934) reveals valuable information about the artist Maruja Mallo's brief experience teaching art to children, even as it points up an important current in progressive pedagogy instituted in Spain in the early twentieth century and promoted under the Second Spanish Republic. The artist's interest in children's art is contextualized through a discussion of women's role and documentation of leading artists, and intellectuals' enthusiasm for the experimentation carried out in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. The suggestion is made that the children's drawings which were featured in the Diablo Mundo article forecast the kinds of drawings that were made by children in Republican zones during the Spanish Civil War.