https://twitter.com/DaveVescio/status/1207028149873082368
A Spanish art historian uncovered the first use of modern art as a deliberate form
of torture: Kandinsky and Klee, as well Buñuel and Dalí, were the inspiration behind
a series of secret cells and torture centers built in Barcelona in 1938, the work of a
French anarchist,Alphonse Laurencˇicˇ (a Slovene family name!), who invented a form of
“psychotechnic” torture: he created his so-called “colored cells” as a contribution to
the fight against Franco’s forces.1 The cells were as inspired by ideas of geometric abstraction
and surrealism as they were by avant-garde art theories on the psychological
properties of colors. Beds were placed at a 20-degree angle, making them near impossible
to sleep on, and the floors of the 6-foot-by-3-foot cells were strewn with
bricks and other geometric blocks to prevent the prisoners from walking backward
and forward.The only option left to them was staring at the walls, which were curved
and covered with mind-altering patterns of cubes, squares, straight lines, and spirals
which utilized tricks of color, perspective, and scale to cause mental confusion and
distress. Lighting effects gave the impression that the dizzying patterns on the wall were
moving. Laurencˇicˇ preferred to use the color green because, according to his theory
of the psychological effects of various colors, it produced melancholy and sadness.
