Puppets, child art and an illuminated manuscript: Puppet shows with multilayers of primitivism in 1920s Granada

As part of folk art, puppetry is a predictable subset of primitivism that attracted several modern artists and writers. Framed by modernist discourses favourable to the marionette, the Títeres de Cachiporra (Billy Club Puppets) and El Retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Peter's Retable) shows conceived in 1920s Granada disclose several dimensions of primitivism. These shows resulted from the collaboration between three Spanish artists - the widely acclaimed poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, the composer Manuel de Falla who circulated between Paris and Granada, and the multifaceted artist and drawing teacher Hermenegildo Lanz who has been neglected by art historiography. While Lanz's stage design and puppets lead to folk art, the grotesque, the child and the medieval, the artist himself wrote insightful clues on the primitiveness of puppet techniques and animation. Drawing upon the archival research in Granada, this chapter revisits the 1923 performances and addresses explicit uses of the word 'primitive' within the field of puppetry, and the links between puppetry and animism, a concept deeply rooted in theories on 'primitive' mentality and animation theory. Ultimately, this approach goes beyond the primitivism conveyed by the artefacts (sets and puppets) to recall the primitivist layer attached to animation.