Varietés

Toward the end of the 1920s, the variety show became a fixture in Spanish culture, growing more daring in the increasingly permissive atmosphere of the Republican period that reigned before the Spanish Civil War. But with the censorship and restraint of dictatorship, the need for a release valve became more pressing; the variety show lived on. Variet s compiles mostly black-and-white photographs taken between the 1940s and 1970s at various popular shows--not always legal ones--offering a pageant of the aesthetics of beautiful dancers, posing for the camera in various states of undress. Above all else, Variet s is a tribute to the cabaret and to its stars, the many people belonging to a world that has become extinct--a world of illusion, magic and fleeting glamour.