SKK - Roh, Flores, Leal

Roh

Roh created the term Magic Realism to portray the new painting’s return to Realism after Expressionism’s more realistic and figural representation. According to him, the “convulsive life” and “fiery exaltation” of Expressionism have given way to the representation of vigorous life in a “civil, metallic, restrained” manner. He describes the ways in which the Post-Expressionist painting of the 1920s returns to a renewed pleasure in real objects even as it integrates the formal innovations and spiritual thrust of Expressionism.

Flores

In his essay, Flores came to the result that in Latin America, Romanticism and Realism seem bound together in one afflatus. Evidently, the roots of this conflict of ideas or attitudes are psychological, and lead all the way back to the great Spanish tradition, to writers and painters of the past. Then again, much of it can be ascribed to the unstable economic and social milieu of the writers of Spain and Latin America, which forces them to improvisation.

Leal

Leal criticizes Flores’ essay on Magical Realism on that he does not offer a formal definition of magical realism. He does not agree with Flores’ definition of magical realism because he includes authors who do not belong to the movement. Neither does he agree that Borges started the movement in 1935. He says that the term magical realism was first used by the art critic Franz Roh to designate the pictorial output of the Post-expressionist period. Magical Realism is not magic literature. Its aim is to express emotions, not to evoke them. Magical Realism is an attitude toward reality that can be expressed in popular or cultured forms.