May Revolution
The May Revolution was a direct reaction to Spain's Peninsular War. In 1808, King Ferdinand VII of Spain abdicated in favor of Napoleon, who granted the throne to his brother, Joseph Bonaparte. A Supreme Central Junta led resistance to Joseph's government and the French occupation of Spain, but eventually suffered a series of reversals that resulted in the Spanish loss of the northern half of the country. On February 1, 1810, French troops took Seville and gained control of most of Andalusia. The Supreme Junta retreated to Cadiz and dissolved itself, and the Council of Regency of Spain and the Indies replaced it. News of these events arrived in Buenos Aires on May 18, brought by British ships.
Gaston Diehl
In October 1943, during the Nazi Occupation, Diehl founded the May Salon in Paris in a café on the Palais Royal, in opposition to the ideology of Nazism and its condemnation of degenerate art. Its other founder-members were Henri-Georges Adam, Emmanuel Auricoste, Lucien Coutaud, Robert Couturier, Jacques Despierre, Marcel Gili, Leon Gischia, Francis Gruber, René Iché, Jean Le Moal, Alfred Manessier, André Marchand, Edouard Pignon, Gustave Singier, Claude Venard and Roger Vieillard. Several of them (Coutaud, Gischia, Iché, Le Moal, Manessier, Marchand, Pignon, Singier) had in 1941 participated in the exhibition of Twenty young painters of French tradition. The first May Salon took place at the Galerie Pierre Maurs from May 29 to June 29, 1945.