Tono and his «tonerías» (1938). The artistic vanguard in the service of the rebel propaganda

Abstract

Among the famous illustrators who provide an inconditional support to the rebel cause, there is Antonio de Lara, also known as Tono. He represented the Art-Deco movement in the 20s; over time his art becam simpler under cubist, surrealist, dadaist or constructivist influences. His style was from then on easily identifiable, mostly for the geometric drawing of his cartoon characters but also trough the absurd situations reminiscent of the English nonsense tradition, introduced in Spain by Ramón Gómez de la Serna. Tono, in France when the Civil War broke out, decided to cross the border in order to join the self-proclaimed “nationalists”, giving up his traditional apolisticism. He played an important part in emblematic magazines such as Vértice or La Ametralladora. In 1938, he published a book called 100 tonerias in which he collected one hundred cartoons. Most of them caricature the enemies with a number of characters who, like a comic, end up building an original universe with its own code and who are an efficient vehicle of propaganda.