Alphonse Laurencic

Alphonse Laurencic (Enghien-les-Bains, France, 2 July 1902 – Camp de la Bota, Barcelona, 9 July 1939) was a French painter and architect. He is known for designing jail cells to torture captured supporters of the Nationalist faction of the Spanish Civil War.

Biography

Laurencic was born in France as the son of Slovene immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[1] Laurencic supported the Republican forces fighting Francisco Franco's Nationalist army in Spain. In 1938, he helped build Civil War jail cells intended to torture Nationalist supporters which resembled 3-D modern art paintings by surrealist Salvador Dalí and Bauhaus artist Wassily Kandinsky.

According to Spanish art historian Jose Milicua, who found papers from Laurencic's 1939 trial by a Nationalist military court, Laurencic told the court the cells, in Barcelona, featured sloping beds at a 20-degree angle that were almost impossible to sleep on. They also had irregularly shaped bricks on the floor that prevented prisoners from walking backwards or forwards. The walls in the 2 m x 1 m cells were covered in surrealist patterns designed to make prisoners distressed and confused, and lighting effects were used to make the artwork even more dizzying. Some of them had a stone seat designed to make occupants instantly slide to the floor, while other cells were painted in tar and became stiflingly hot in the summer. Laurencic told the court the cells were built after he heard reports of similar structures being built elsewhere in Spain.[2][3]

Bibliography
  • Checas de Barcelona, de César Alcalá. Belacqua. Barcelona, 2005. ISBN 978-84-96326-44-6
  • Las checas del terror, de César Alcalá. LibrosLibres. 2007. ISBN 978-84-96088-59-7 [4]
  • La causa general, Akrón, 2008. ISBN 978-84-936011-8-8
  • El terror staliniano en la España republicana, Felix Llaugé. Editorial Aura. Barcelona, 1974.
  • La persecución religiosa en España durante la Segunda República, 1931–1939 Vicente Cárcel Ortí. Ediciones Rialp, 1990 – 404 páginas
  • Checas de Barcelona: el terror y la represión estalinista en Catalunya, de César Alcalá Giménez. Edit. Belacqua de ediciones y publicaciones, S.L. ISBN 978-84-96326-44-6. Barcelona, 2005.

References
  1. "Gustaf Lord, Graphic Artist". Archived from the original on 2013-04-18. Retrieved 2012-10-18.
  2. Rafael Chacón, Por qué hice las checas de Barcelona. Laurencic ante el consejo de guerra, Editorial Solidaridad nacional, Barcelona, 1939.
  3. Finn, Pat (17 August 2016). "The Architecture of Psychological Warfare: How Maddening Modern Art Inspired the Designs of Prison Cells". Architizer Journal. Retrieved 27 June 2023.
  4. Alcalá, César (28 November 2017). Las checas del terror: la desmemoria histórica al descubierto. Libroslibres, S.l. ISBN 9788496088597 – via Google Books.
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