Equipo Crónica

EQUIPO CRÓNICA (Valencia, 1964 - 1981).
"The Builders", 1971.
Multiple sculpture, silkscreened cardboard, edition of 25 copies.
Signed.
Presents the loss of one of the parts.
Work reproduced in "Identitats. Equipo Crónica-Gordillo-Valdés", catalog of the exhibition held at the Manel Mayoral art gallery in 2007 (p. 16-17).
The work is catalogued in "Equipo Crónica. Cataloguing, graphic and multiple works. 1965-1982", nº 10, p. 139 (Bilbao: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1988).
Measurements: 45.5 x 43.5 x 24 cm.
In 1971, an exhibition at the Colegio de Arquitectos de Barcelona, entitled "Cultura i Policia" (Culture and Police), showed different large-format cycles by Equipo Crónica. They combined and merged images from press photographs and the best known topics of the artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century, with an advertising poster treatment. The discourse of the exhibition revolved around the popular struggle in the street with the repressive agents in full activity. Based on Léger's language, with the inclusion of images from Picasso's "Guernica", the group built a large-scale montage for this occasion, under the name of "The Builders", of which the piece presented here is a mock-up.
Equipo Crónica, or Crónicas de la Realidad, was a group of Spanish painters active between 1964 and 1981. It was founded by Manolo Valdés, Juan Antonio Toledo, who soon left the group, and Rafael Solbes, whose death in 1981 put an end to the project. The historian and critic Tomás Llorens was also a member of the group. Equipo Crónica moved away from the prevailing informalism to cultivate a figurative painting, closely linked to pop-art. His style was a unique blend of realism, criticism, pop, pictorial quotations, anachronisms and bittersweet pastiches. There are works by Equipo Crónica in the IVAM in Valencia, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Juan March Foundation and the Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid, among others. In 2007 an exhibition dedicated to Equipo Crónica was organized at the Museo de Arte Abstracto in Cuenca.