Alphonse Laurencic

Alphonse Laurencic (Enghien-les-Bains, France, 2 July 1902 - Camp de la Bota, Barcelona, 9 July 1939) was a French painter and architect.

Biography

Laurencic was born in France as the son of Slovene immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Laurencic supported the Republican forces fighting General Franco's Fascist Nationalist army in Spain. In 1938, he helped build Civil War jail cells intended to torture Francoist supporters which resembled 3-D modern art paintings by surrealist Salvador Dalí and Bauhaus artist Wassily Kandinsky. According to Spanish art historian Jose Milicua, who found papers from Laurencic's 1939 trial by a Francoist military court, Laurencic told the court the cells, in Barcelona, featured sloping beds at a 20-degree angle that were almost impossible to sleep on. They also had irregularly shaped bricks on the floor that prevented prisoners from walking backwards or forwards. The walls in the 6ftx3ft cells were covered in surrealist patterns designed to make prisoners distressed and confused, and lighting effects were used to make the artwork even more dizzying. Some of them had a stone seat designed to make occupants instantly slide to the floor, while other cells were painted in tar and became stiflingly hot in the summer. Laurencic told the court the cells were built after he heard reports of similar structures being built elsewhere in Spain.

Alphons

Alphons (Latinized Alphonsus, Adelphonsus, Adefonsus) is a male given name recorded from the 8th century (Alfonso I of Asturias, r. 739-757) in the Christian successor states of the Visigothic kingdom in the Iberian peninsula. In the later medieval period it became a standard name in the Hispanic and Portuguese royal families.

It is derived from a Gothic name, or a conflation of several Gothic names; from *Aþalfuns, composed of the elements aþal "noble" and funs "eager, brave, ready", and perhaps influenced by names such as *Alafuns, *Adefuns and *Hildefuns. It is recorded as Adefonsus in the 9th and 10th century, and as Adelfonsus, Adelphonsus in the 10th to 11th. The reduced form Alfonso is recorded in the late 9th century, and the Portuguese form Afonso from the early 11th.

Variants of the name include: Alfonso (Spanish and Italian), Alfons (Dutch, German, Polish and Scandinavian), Afonso (Portuguese), Alphonse, Alfonse (Italian, French and English), etc.

Middle Ages

Iberian royal families

Alfonso de Cartagena

Alfonso de Santa María de Cartagena (variants: Alfonso de Carthagena, Alonso de Cartagena) (1384, Burgos – 1456, Villasandino) was a Jewish convert to Christianity, a Roman Catholic bishop, diplomat, historian and writer of pre-Renaissance Spain.

Biography

Alfonso de Cartagena was the second son of Rabbi Paul of Burgos, who converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1390 or 1391. At the same time, Alfonso and his four brothers, one sister and two uncles were baptized. His mother, however, was not. Cartagena studied law in Salamanca, and "was a great lawyer in canon and civil law", according to Claros varones de Castilla (1486). He served as dean of Santiago de Compostela and Segovia, later becoming apostolic nuncio and canon of Burgos (1421).

He was equally distinguished as statesman and as priest. In 1434 he was named by King John II de Trastámara (1405–54) as the representative of Castile at the Council of Basel, succeeding Cardinal Alonso de Carrillo. There he composed a famous discourse in Latin and Castilian (Propositio... super altercatione praeminentia, 1434), calling on the council to recognize the superior right of the King of Castile over the King of England.

Alfonso (disambiguation)

Alfonso (Alphonso, Afonso, Alphons, Alphonse) is a masculine given name. It may also refer to:

See also