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"Evacuation" by Helios Gómez shows columns of refugees fleeing, their homes in flames behind them. ⁠ ⁠ Fear, exhaustion, and despair are etched on their faces. Women clutch children, their eyes are haunted. These eyes, having seen the horror of oppression and hatred, seem tortured. Tones of ochre, orange, and brown feature heavily for the land, the flames, and also the faces. The atmosphere is oppressive, desolate. This painting shows the human cost of fascism and ominously fore-shadowed a mass evacuation that took place just two years later in 1939.⁠ ⁠ Today is the #WorldRefugeeDay ⁠ Read ➡️ "Helios Gómez: Romani Revolutionary" [🔗link in bio]⁠ ✍️ Candy Bedworth @candybedworth⁠ ⁠ 💬 Late January and early February of 1939 saw nearly half a million Spanish civilians and soldiers flee to France as refugees. All sought sanctuary from Franco’s brutal fascist regime. This huge migration is known as the Retirada (Spanish for Retreat). Furthermore, it was the biggest single influx of refugees ever known in France. The French were both unprepared and didn’t want a mass of foreigners entering their country, calling them “foreign undesirables”. ⁠ ⁠ Romani people were particularly unwelcome. Families were separated and imprisoned behind barbed wire with no food, water, or shelter. Dysentery and disease spread fast in the overcrowded, rat-infested camps. Tragically, any Romani who managed to survive until the German Occupation of France was likely to be exterminated in Nazi gas chambers.⁠ ⁠ 🖼️ Helios Gómez, Evacuation, 1937, Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. @museunacional⁠ @eriac_romamoma⁠ ⁠ #romani #catalan #heliosgomez #expressionism #spanishcivilwar #spanishart