Vintage Spanish Art Deco: The La Farsa Zarzuela Covers, 1927 to 1929
Vintage Spanish Art Deco survives at its most vivid in an unlikely place: the covers of La Farsa, a Madrid weekly that published zarzuelas and plays as inexpensive booklets between 1927 and 1936. This guide introduces the seven La Farsa covers in our collection, issued in 1927, 1928, and 1929 and drawn by leading Spanish illustrators of the day, including Enrique Ochoa, Antonio Barbero, and Carlos Masberger. Each cover has its own article in this series, linked below; this page is the map.
Spain took the international Art Deco style and made it local. French geometry met an older Spanish illustration tradition, the modernismo of the great Barcelona and Madrid magazines, and the result was a commercial art full of flat color, drawn lettering, and regional character. Because the style lived on posters, magazine covers, and packaging rather than in galleries, its finest surviving examples are often printed ephemera. A theatre booklet that cost 50 céntimos and was meant to be read and discarded turns out to be a perfect time capsule of Spanish graphic design between the wars.
The collection at a glance
- Published: Madrid, by Rivadeneyra, then Estampa from nº 143
- Ran: 1927 to 1936, 463 numbered issues, weekly, 50 céntimos
- Contents: zarzuelas and plays, printed just after their premieres
- Our set: seven covers, 1927 to 1929, found together at a Madrid book market
- Style: Spanish Art Deco theatre booklet covers; vintage Spanish poster art
From the Collection
La Parranda, La Farsa Cover Print, 1928
Cover of La Farsa nº 36 (1928): Fernández Ardavín and Francisco Alonso's Murcian zarzuela, drawn by Carlos Masberger.
From $34.50 · Free shipping
VIEW THE PRINTPrint Details
- Archival matte paper, 189 g/m², with pigment inks
- Unframed: 12″ × 18″, 20″ × 30″ or 24″ × 36″
- Framed in Black, Red Oak or White Ayous wood, ready to hang
- Printed on demand; allow 5 to 12 business days for delivery
Keep Reading
La Parranda: Carlos Masberger's 1928 Zarzuela Cover for La Farsa
What Spanish Art Deco Looks Like in Miniature
The markers of the style are all here, compressed onto a booklet roughly the size of a modern paperback. Color is flat and unmixed, laid down in a handful of inks. Lettering is drawn, not set, swelling and tapering like architecture. Figures are reduced to silhouette and pattern: a chorus line becomes three inks and a repeated rhythm of legs, a Murcian farm girl becomes a face inside concentric circles, a harlequin's costume becomes pure geometry. Behind the modern surface sits an older Spanish inheritance, the poster tradition of the 1890s and the illustrated magazines of the modernista years, which taught Spanish illustrators to make an image read across a street.
What the small format adds is intimacy. A poster addresses a crowd; a booklet cover addresses one buyer at a kiosk counter, and then again in the hand at home. The La Farsa covers work at both distances, a heraldic emblem from six feet and a portrait from six inches, which is why they enlarge to poster size without embarrassment. They were always posters, traveling incognito as books.
A Theatre Booklet for 50 Céntimos
La Farsa belonged to the great age of Spanish popular publishing, when the theatre was the mass entertainment of Madrid and a hit zarzuela could fill the Teatro Apolo or the Calderón for a season. The collection printed each work days after its premiere, libretto complete, and sold it at kiosks and bookstalls across the country for half a peseta. Over nine years it issued 463 numbers before the Civil War ended both the collection and the world that produced it in the summer of 1936.
The covers were the advertising, and the publisher spent accordingly, hiring illustrators who also worked for the great magazines. Early issues used shared and allegorical designs; by the numbers in our set, the covers had become portraits of each production, drawn for that zarzuela alone. That a handful survive in good condition is an accident of attics and forgotten stock. They were printed on the cheapest paper that would take ink, and they were never meant to last a century.
Meet the Seven Covers
La Aventurera (1927). The earliest cover in the set, from La Farsa nº 4: Tellaeche and Rosillo's zarzuela of intrigue, under a marionette couple in eighteenth-century dress, signed “Roberto”. The copy in our founding set carries handwritten names across the skirt, a previous owner's trace. Read the full story of La Aventurera.
Las Alondras (1927). From La Farsa nº 15, Romero and Fernández Shaw's Paris-set zarzuela with music by Jacinto Guerrero, premiered at the Teatro Apolo. Antonio Barbero drew its famous chorus line of midinettes in three inks and the paper's own yellow. Read the full story of Las Alondras.
La Manola del Portillo (1928). From La Farsa nº 22: Carrere and García Pacheco's zarzuela with music by Pablo Luna, set in the Madrid of 1808. Roberto's cover gives the manola Paloma the stillness of a playing card and a stage set at once. Read the full story of La Manola del Portillo.
La Parranda (1928). From La Farsa nº 36, Fernández Ardavín and Francisco Alonso's Murcian zarzuela, home of the Canto a Murcia. Carlos Masberger drew its face in concentric circles two years before the premiere, in 1926, and publishers kept it until the right production came. Read the full story of La Parranda.
La Morería (1928). From La Farsa nº 38: the Lisbon legend of Maria Severa, founding singer of fado, adapted from Julio Dantas and set by Rafael Millán. Masberger signed and dated the cover beneath its title band, as our copy of the booklet proves. Read the full story of La Morería.
La Marchenera (1928). Moreno Torroba's Andalusian zarzuela, premiered at the Teatro de la Zarzuela. Enrique Ochoa, the most celebrated illustrator in the set, drew its harlequin and Pierrot in a garden in Marchena in 1842. Read the full story of La Marchenera.
Los Claveles (1929). The latest cover in the set, from La Farsa nº 85: José Serrano's Madrid sainete of love at a perfume factory, its majo standing between columns of stacked type on a cover signed “Alonso”. Read the full story of Los Claveles.
The Illustrators
Five hands account for the seven covers. Enrique Ochoa was a star of the illustrated press, a contributor to Blanco y Negro for fifteen years and the illustrator of Rubén Darío's complete works. Antonio Barbero moved between the drawing desk and the cinema, founding one of Spain's first film magazines. Carlos Masberger supplied two covers in two different registers, a stage portrait and a piece of pure design. The remaining covers are signed with names that remain partly mysterious: “Roberto”, a Rivadeneyra regular whose full identity is still unconfirmed, and “Alonso”, very likely the Félix Alonso praised for covers across these series. The collector Santiago Navas Fernández, who owns a complete run of La Farsa, has documented the collection issue by issue on his La Farsa page, an essential resource for anyone who falls for these booklets.
From a Madrid Bookstall to a Wall
Our seven booklets were found together at an outdoor book market in Madrid, in the shadow of the city's great art museum, and chosen as a set because their covers stopped us mid aisle. They became the first prints in our shop and, in time, the reason Vintage Print Project exists. The covers are reproduced as textured prints that keep the feel of the original paper, and the full run of our editions sits in the Vintage Spanish Art Deco collection alongside the later Spanish-inspired designs they influenced. Start with whichever cover catches your eye. That is exactly what they were designed, ninety eight years ago, to make you do.
