Surreal torture in modern art cells

A Spanish art historian has uncovered what was alleged to be the first use of modern art as a deliberate form of torture, with the discovery that mind-bending prison cells were built by anarchist artists 65 years ago during the country's bloody civil war.

Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky and Klee, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali, were said to be the inspiration behind secret cells and torture centres built in Barcelona and elsewhere (El Pais newspaper has reported).

Most were the work of an enthusiastic French anarchist, Alphonse Laurencic, who invented a form of "psychotechnic" torture, according to the research of the historian Jose Milicua.

Mr Milicua's information came from a 1939 account of Laurencic's trial before a Francoist military tribunal.

Laurencic, who claimed to be a painter and conductor in civilian life, created his so-called "coloured cells" as a contribution to the fight against General Franco's right-wing rebel forces.

The cells, built in 1938 and reportedly hidden from foreign journalists who visited the makeshift jails on Vallmajor and Saragossa streets, were as inspired by ideas of geometric abstraction and surrealism as they were by avant garde art theories on the psychological properties of colours.

Beds were placed at a 20-degree angle, making them hard to sleep on, and the floors of the 1.8 metre by 0.9 metre cells were scattered with bricks and other geometric blocks to prevent prisoners from walking backwards and forwards, according to the account of Laurencic's trial.

The only option left to prisoners was staring at the walls, which were curved and covered with mind-altering patterns of cubes, squares, straight lines and spirals which utilised tricks of colour, perspective and scale to cause mental confusion and distress.

Lighting effects gave the impression that the dizzying patterns on the wall were moving.

A stone bench was similarly designed to send a prisoner sliding to the floor, Mr Milicua said. Some cells were painted with tar so that they would warm up in the sun and produce asphyxiating heat.