“Si me quieres escribir…” Womens in the antifascist cultural press (Argentina, 1930-1940)

Abstract

In the mid-1930s, the responsibility of intellectuals regarding the international political situation became a topic of particular interest in Argentina’s artistic and literary community. The great European political developments —the rise of fascism, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War— directly influenced the Argentine cultural field. This new historical confi- guration generated a redefinition of the intellectual as a subject of political intervention. Women were not immune to this process: female artists and writers began to participate in new ways in the public realm, whether in response to the international situation or by creating new expressive languages to intervene in cultural debates. In this paper we discuss some of these female inter- ventions: contributions by the writer Maria Rosa Oliver, the visual artist Raquel Forner, and the photographer Grete Stern in a number of antifascist magazines published in Buenos Aires.