Mario Armengol, the unknown combatant of the Second World War cartoon campaign against Hitler

He arrived in the United Kingdom in 1940 after serving in the French Foreign Legion, which fought against the Nazis, and fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. There, Rafael Armengol Torrella came into contact with the Ministry of Information of Winston Churchill’s government. He sent some drawings and was hired a year later to fight on the propaganda front against the Axis powers, using his pencils and his sarcastic, incisive, and sometimes scatological humor. Hitler was the main object of the sharp criticism of one of the great caricaturists of the Second World War, whose drawings were published in international magazines and publications, and were even compiled in two small books published during the deadliest conflict in history, despite the difficulties in doing so.

However, Armengol remains a great unknown. He himself stopped working on caricature when the war ended and devoted himself to painting, drawing, and sculpting. He did not place much value on his work for Britain, which he considered to be wartime drawings, and therefore commissioned. But he preserved them over time, as did his family, thanks to which 80 years after the end of World War II they are coming to light in an unprecedented exhibition that brings together around 150 cartoons by the Catalan artist at Valencia’s MuVIM museum.

Ink against Hitler: Mario Armengol, caricaturist in World War II is the title of the exhibition that opened on October 2 and can be seen until February next year before moving to the MNAC in Barcelona. “He was an exceptional caricaturist,” said Plàcid Garcia-Planas, journalist for La Vanguardia and curator of the exhibition at its inauguration, alongside Autonomous University of Barcelona historian Arnau Gonzàlez.

Both stressed that Armengol was the only Spanish artist who worked intensively for British propaganda and the Allies. And he did so with a “versatile and tremendously modern style, which already points towards today’s comics. His work continues to challenge us on a very transcendent question: how an enlightened man full of hatred can lead entire peoples toward the abyss, seducing society itself to collective degradation,” said García-Planas, who has worked as a war correspondent in numerous conflicts.

“It was a hidden treasure and now is a good time for it to come to light,” said the grandson of the artist, Gil Armengol, referring to the relevance of the drawings in the current context, in which several wars are raging and populism is on the rise. Fellow family member, Lindah Kiddey, stressed the artist’s generous personality and his socialist activism. “The 150 drawings on display are a true treasure of European and world history, full of reflections that, 80 years later, are still relevant,” said the curators.

War fronts

“These are cartoons that speak to us about all the major themes and war fronts, becoming a great frieze of the greatest conflagration the world has ever experienced,” they added. They are, in any case, pieces with a declared will of propaganda, to “combat the undeniable power of attraction of the swastika as a symbol of Nazism,” and in which the German army is caricatured, with the aim also of motivating the citizenry with respect to the military forces of the Allies. The cartoons exude “a human and political tension that challenges us today about the limits of humor,” the curators added.

The exhibition is organized thematically for educational purposes and is enriched by a small sample of coins that soldiers who fought in the war carried in their pockets: a contribution that delves into the mass dissemination of symbols that the caricatures on display sought to destroy or defend. The size of some of the drawings has been enlarged, just as they were published.

The MuVIM is working with the intention of allowing this collection of drawings to travel around various cities in Spain and Europe, given their relevance, according to the director of the museum, Rafa Company, and the Valencia regional deputy for Culture, Paco Teruel.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition