Barcelona Museum Shows 40 Civil War Sketches by Anarchist Artist Sim on 90th Anniversary

José Luis Rey Vila, who signed his work as Sim, sketched the front lines of revolutionary Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. While Pablo Picasso later gained fame for Guernica, Sim's bold drawings first brought the conflict's urgency to life with blocky lines and vivid colors. His sketches captured anarchist militias in street fights and calmer moments afterward, including portraits of red-capped volunteers, nurses with the wounded, and milicianas raising fists.

His illustrations appeared in exhibits and booklets that spread awareness abroad. After the 1937 exile to Paris, Sim died in obscurity in 1983. "He was very, very well known at the time of the war," said Eduard Vallès, head of collections at Barcelona's Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. "In the beginnings of the conflict, on its first days, he was there."

On the 90th anniversary, MNAC displays 40 recently acquired Sim illustrations. Born in Cádiz, Sim studied art in Gibraltar and served as a navy gunner in the Rif War in Morocco, an experience that turned him into a pacifist. He settled in Barcelona as his graphic design career started on July 17, 1936, when General Francisco Franco launched his coup from North Africa.

Popular Front areas fell to Franco's forces, but Barcelona residents prepared. On a hot night in the anarchist stronghold, they raided armories, emptied gunsmiths, and mounted machine guns on trucks. Gunfire roused Rey Vila early on July 19. He grabbed his sketchbook and rushed to the streets for the initial clashes between fascists and republicans.

Workers blocked cavalry with newsprint rolls and lobbed homemade bombs from roofs. Sim moved through plazas and avenues, sketching barricades, bloodied bandanas on militiamen, and trucks with anarcho-syndicalist red-and-black flags. The Guardia Civil joined the republic, routing Francoists by day's end.

Sim offered sketches to the Sindicat de Dibuixos, an artists' union in a seized palace. Carles Fontserè praised them as "capturing the tragically festive atmosphere of that memorable day," but others rejected Sim over his anarchist views and spy accusations. He turned to the CNT-FAI, whose office published Estampas de la Revolución Española 19 Julio de 1936. Catalonia's government issued 12 Escenas de Guerra the next year.

Europe's non-intervention pact isolated Spain, forcing smugglers to move art across the closed France-Spain border amid anarchist-communist rifts, said historian Morris Brodie of the University of Aberystwyth. "If there was an anarchist militiaman at the border, they wouldn't look too kindly on communist party stamps, and vice versa."

Sim's book reached the US, Canada, and China, where anarchist Ba Jin reproduced it. It raised funds and opposed non-intervention. International press arrived soon after, with Robert Capa's Falling Soldier photo in September 1936.

In 1937, Sim aided the Spanish pavilion at the Paris Exposition, displaying Guernica alongside works by Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, and Julio González. Nationalists won by 1939, and Franco ruled for decades. In exile, Sim drew bullfights and Don Quixote but never returned, though much pavilion art did, hidden by MNAC from the regime.

Rey Vila dropped his pseudonym, sketched the Nazi invasion of Paris—where a bomb wounded him—and May 1968 unrest. His Civil War art faded until family, historians, MNAC, and artists revived it. Communists later dominated war imagery, sidelining anarchists and Catalan nationalists, Brodie said.

"A lot of artists painted the war later, when they were at home," Vallès noted. "Sim's illustrations were made during the war. He wasn't a fighter but ideologically, he was a soldier."