On 8 October, the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, in Barcelona (Spain), inaugurated the exhibition"Ink against Hitler" with the cartoons and illustrations of Mario Armengol, which had already been mounted at the Museo Valenciano de la Ilustración y de la Modernidad (MuVIM) in 2024.
Now, the exhibition Ink against Hitler is the presentation in Barcelona of the discovery of the only Catalan and Spanish artist who worked massively for British and Allied propaganda during the Second World War. From 1941 to 1945, the Catalan Mario Armengol Torrella (Sant Joan de les Abadesses, 1909 - Nottingham, 1995) drew some two thousand cartoons or caricatures in the service of the British Ministry of Information against the Third Reich and the Axis for publication in newspapers and magazines in London and in Allied and neutral countries.
The exhibition, curated by Plàcid Garcia-Planas and Arnau Gonzàlez i Vilalta, will be open until 11 January 2026 and brings together an interesting selection of the originals kept by the author and his family which, together with the publications in which many of those cartoons appeared, make up what is considered one of the world's largest collections of illustrations of political satire of the most terrible conflict in history.
Letter of dismissal and thanks to M. H. Armengol from the British authorities, with the titles of the last three drawings
British authorities with the titles of the last three drawings collected.
A. L. & P. A. Kiddey
"El arma de los muertos" (The weapon of the dead), 1945. Last surviving vignette of Mario Armengol's war work. After so much death, the justice of the victims will be the greatest punishment for the Nazi executioners. The crimes of Nazism will set the law on the concept of genocide.
The exhibition offers the discovery of a great satire that questions authoritarianism, pain and the limits of humour and art in turbulent times. Mario Armengol was the artist from Catalonia and Spain who worked most intensely for Allied propaganda during the Second World War.
The son of textile industrialists from Terrassa, his story was that of the Catalan literary classic, L'auca del senyor Esteve: he wanted to be an artist and not a manufacturer. A disenchanted Republican, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in November 1938 in Paris.
He was first stationed in the Sahara and, at the outbreak of World War II, fought against the Nazis in the Norwegian fjords of Narvik alongside French, British, Polish, Catalan and Spanish Republican soldiers, trying to stop the German expansion into the Arctic. He drew his experiences in cartoons in the United Kingdom, just after arriving from the Norwegian battles of 1940 and the Allied retreat from France, and ended up in Britain in 1941, hired by the Churchill government's Ministry of Information, becoming one of the most prominent cartoonists of the worst conflict ever, although he never devoted himself to it before or since.
"Idyll, 1942-1943. Later published in According to Plan. Love with death is everything to Hitler. The gas is a dramatic addition, clearly alluding to its use in the extermination camps.
Until 1945 he drew some two thousand cartoons against Hitler, other leading figures of the Third Reich and its allies, which were published in newspapers all over the world, from New Zealand to Chile via Haiti. A fresco in which all the fronts and protagonists appear, with a humour that the British recognised as "sharp, bitter and caustic, typically Catalan", with a versatility of style that pointed towards modern-day comics.
The expo in Valencia left an interesting and very well cared catalogue of 233 pages in Catalan, Spanish and English which includes almost all the material exhibited and a visitor's guide that you can download here. Alternatively, you can download the guide and catalogue locally.
Untitled, January 1941 (Reverse: "And I saw and there came a pale horse; and the name of the rider who rode him was Death, and hell was with him. And power was given him over the fourth part of the earth to kill with the sword, and with hunger, and with death [...]", Book of Revelation). Before working for British government propaganda, the artist began work on a series of works relating to Nazism characterised as the sum of the four horsemen of the biblical Apocalypse.
America has not yet seen the monster, 1941. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt observes the "storm" in Europe from across the Atlantic. They would not enter the war until December of that year.
"Floods in the Ruhr, floods in Warsaw", 26 May 1943. Later published in According to Plan. Coincidence of floods in the industrial German Ruhr due to the destruction of several dams by Allied bombing; in Warsaw the floods were the blood of the dead Jewish resistance fighters, some 7,000, from the ghetto raided by the Germans.
Sieg Heil!, 1942 (in ThoseThree). "We escaped destruction by the skin of our teeth", Hitler said in a speech in 1941 ("By the skin of our teeth we escaped destruction"). The result: instead of raised arms there are crutches as a metaphor for total indoctrination.
"Smelling the Rat (The Traitor) (European Wall), 1944. Later published in According to Plan. The Allies watch collaborationist France with Pierre Laval at the helm.
"Scheme of Decoration", 1942 (in Those Three). Recalling his frustrated vocation, Hitler superimposes the swastika on the - then - flag of the Imperial Japanese army and navy: the Japanese, allies of Nazi Germany, had the strange status of "honorary Aryans".
"Fewer and Later. 1943-1944. Naziland. Needs. "Trains from: Turkey, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland". The Nazi empire is unable to get the neutrals to sell it essential goods for the continuation of the war.
Fandanguillo, 1943? Hitler and Mussolini perform a flamenco "palo" piece to convince Franco's Spain to remain a "neutral" ally of theirs.
Angel of Peace (Guernica), 1942-1943. Recalling the bombing by the Nazi Condor Legion of the Basque town of Guernica on 26 April 1937. Franco, a puppet of Hitler, while Mussolini appears a mess (as almost always).
"You ungrateful"... 1943. On the poster: "The Blue Division, last week; Don Juan, coming soon"). Later published in Tribune, London, 5 November 1943. Hitler reproaches Franco - after having helped him win the Spanish Civil War - for the withdrawal of the Blue Division from the Eastern Front in October 1943.
Mission fulfilled, 1943-1945. As seen through the eyes of British propaganda: Prussian militarism sifted through the Nazi sieve in the face of the work accomplished: destruction.
"No Mora Confort Now!", 1 February 1943. Later published in According to Plan. The Allies have just begun their new strategy of "round-the-clock bombing" of German territory: USAAF planes by day, RAF by night.
Russia, 1942-1943 ("They tell of a wise man who, one day, / Wanted a great people, / And, to conquer the world, / Threw a whole nation, / And what was his surprise, / To see that, instead of greatness, / He got only sausage"). Despite the initial rapid Nazi victories in Operation Barbarossa's conquest of the USSR in 1941, the casualty figures among German soldiers gradually became brutal. The carnage, the slaughter, of civilians and soldiers was savage.
Counter-offensive, 18 January 1943(On the poster: The Russians are advancing on all fronts). The Red Army has won the battle of Stalingrad and goes on the offensive against German troops on Soviet territory. Hitler, angry and oblivious to the real war situation, continues to torture Poland, personified by a half-naked man.
Untitled, 30 June 1943 ("Ruhr; Victims of Nazism"). Hitler in front of his victims, in this case German civilians, after the Allied bombing campaign over the Ruhr.
Shrinking Lebensraum, 1943-1944. Hitler in the centre. On the left: Wehrmacht, on the right: enslaved Europe. A German army suffering from the defeats and occupied countries threatens the life of the Hitler empire.
The punishment of war criminals - should Hitler be made to eat his words? Message. BelgianReview, 41, London, March 1945. US postal envelope sent on 29 March 1944 with a drawing of Hitler eating Mein Kampf.
