Displacement
Felicia Browne
The British artist Felicia Browne (1904-1936) has inspired Boué’s practice relating to the Spanish Civil War and the British response to it.
This has resulted in three projects. In 2015, Boué was approached by Tate Britain for a short film, Felicia Browne: Unofficial War Artist, part of the Animating the Archives project. This led Boué to create an Arts Council England funded project, Through an Artist’s Eye in 2016. She received an a-n bursary for Gift in 2017, a short film responding to a tea set bought in Berlin by Felicia for her sister’s wedding, and subsequently gifted to Boué by her nephew Peter Marshall.
Felicia was a British artist known at the time of her untimely and shocking death as a singular figure. An artist-activist communist and antifascist, she was the only British female volunteer combatant in the Spanish Civil War. She had trained at the Slade School of Art in London and undertaken a sculpture scholarship in Berlin. Felicia’s sketchbooks and letters include documentation of the earliest stages of the Spanish Civil War now held in an archive at Tate Britain. Boué’s projects draw on materials in the Felicia Browne Archive, which can be accessed digitally, here.
Contents:
Felicia Browne, Unofficial War Artist, 2015
Through An Artist’s Eye, 2016
Gift, 2017
Short film
Felicia Browne: Unofficial War Artist, 2015
Through her archive, this film uncovers the work and untimely death of Felicia Browne, a young artist who lost her life in the first months of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. This event reverberates through the work of artist Sonia Boue, here reflecting on the significance of British volunteers, like Browne, who helped republican exiles like her father.
Catalogue, film, paintings
Through An Artist’s Eye was a 2016 Arts Council England funded project paying tribute to British artist Felicia Browne whose drawings and letters documenting the earliest moments of the Spanish Civil War are held in an archive at Tate Britain. A collaboration between visual artist Sonia Boué and poet Jenny Rivarola (both daughters of Spanish republics exiles), this film explores the interface between forms - documentary, poetry, painting and assemblage - to take the viewer on an immersive layered narrative journey, following the seven key stages in Felicia Browne’s short life. A talented artist and ardent antifascist, this film traces her political awakening in Berlin, her membership of the Communist Party in London, her travels to Paris and Barcelona, culminating in her death close to the Aragon Front in Tardienta. Drawing on her letters and drawings of the period this film also features previously unseen drawings from the Sproule collection.
Through An Artist’s Eye, 2016
Millbourne Pond:Birth of a Rebel, Abstract landscape painting with drawing and assemblage
Berlin: Witness, Abstract painting with figure, drawing and assemblage
London: Scullion with a Red Wedge, Abstract painting with drawing and assemblage
Paris: Wandering Savagely, Abstract painting with assemblage
Border: Criss Cross, Abstract landscape painting with assemblage
Barcelona: Street Fighting, Abstract painting with drawing and assemblage
Tardienta: A Bridge Too Far, Abstract painting with drawings and assemblage
Short film
Gift, 2017
Made in 2017 with a Professional Development Bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company, this film celebrates the gift of a historically significant tea set which was gifted to the artist Sonia Boué, by the nephew of British artist Felicia Browne. Felicia was Boué's subject and inspiration for the Arts Council England funded 2016 project Through An Artist's Eye. The film narrates the journey of the tea set from Berlin in 1932 to England to be given as a wedding gift to Felicia's sister Gypsy. Boué presents a poetic encounter with an object of great poignancy, beauty and resonance.