Project to archive and digitize the “Collection of tracings and plates of the Commission for Paleontological and Prehistoric Research” (CIPP)

Abstract

At the end of the nineties, the last conscientious objectors were carrying out their alternative social service in different socio-cultural institutions. This was the situation of David Hernández Martín, a graduate in Archaeology, in the archive of the National Museum of Natural Sciences. During the months he was there, the first conditioning and installation of the Collection of tracings and plates of the Commission for Paleontological and Prehistoric Research (1913), which we will refer to as the CIPP Collection, was carried out. The commission that gives its name to this collection began to work around 1910 throughout a large part of Spain in the shelters and caves that house our prehistoric parietal art. Composed of geologists, paleontologists and painters, they traced the original drawings on the walls of the rocks in situ on translucent glass paper (tracings) and later, or in cases where the orography did not allow it, they drew or recreated the primitive compositions using more rigid paper (plates) as a support. For obvious reasons, its activity was interrupted in 1936, but the Commission nevertheless created this exclusive collection of over 2,000 graphic documents. To put it into artistic context, it is necessary to observe the close relationship that some drawings have with the production that was emerging at that time under the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century (Primitivism, Fauvism or Negrism).