Drawing the Unspeakable: The Multi-faceted Presence of Homosexuality in Federico García Lorca’s Poetic Art

Abstract

In the body of Lorca’s graphic work there can be found multiple traces and ways of approaching homosexuality from various themes, tropes and plastic strategies in which the exhibition and the masked concealment of it coexist in a cross-connected form, without being able to express itself in a consistent and stable mode. Perhaps this is one of the most remarkable characteristics of his plastic work, although it has sometimes been overlooked when reducing the presence of homosexuality to a mere more direct and evident homoeroticism of some drawings of sailors or ephebic gypsies. This article aims to review an aspect that, despite being an increasingly contested approach, has not received global attention. Similarly, it is among its objectives to draw a first cartography of the various presences of homosexuality contained in the complex magma of his plastic work.