Equipo Crónica

EQUIPO CRÓNICA (Valencia, 1964 - 1981).
"El bobo de Coria", 1970.
Acrylic on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Work referenced in the catalog raisonné of M. Dalmace "Equipo Crónica: cataloguing, graphic and multiple works (1965 - 1982)", Page 135, Ref. 13.
Measurements: 120 x 120 cm, 123 x 123 cm (with frame).

The work is part of the maturity stage of the group. Formally it presents a composition of strong graphic character, with flat colors, defined contours and an aesthetic close to serigraphy and the visual codes of mass culture. The scene reinterprets in a fragmented and contemporary way the famous portrait of a jester painted by Diego Velázquez in the 17th century (known as El bobo de Coria). The figure of the jester appears decontextualized and displaced towards a modern space, sharing the stage with the equestrian image of a monarch also taken from Velázquez's repertoire, generating an anachronistic dialogue between power, representation and marginality.

As for its historical context, the piece takes place in the last years of Franco's regime, at a time of strong political tension and cultural questioning of the official account of Spain's history. During this final stage of the dictatorial regime, many artists resorted to indirect strategies to introduce criticism and reflection. Equipo Crónica used the pictorial heritage of the Golden Age, especially Velázquez, as a tool to analyze the structures of power, the construction of the political image and the instrumentalization of artistic tradition.

Thus, El bobo de Coria is not only a contemporary revision of a baroque icon, but a critical operation: the buffoon, a marginal figure at court, becomes a metaphor for the individual in the face of the apparatus of power represented by the equestrian image. The work articulates past and present, high culture and popular language, tradition and modernity, becoming a key piece in the artistic and political narrative of Spanish art.

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. He explains the theoretical bases of the Equipo in a text entitled "La distanciación de la Distanciación" (The Distancing of Distanciation). Likewise, the three painters signed a manifesto in 1965, where they defined themselves as a working group with collective methods and supra-individual goals. Equipo Crónica moved away from the prevailing informalism to cultivate a figurative painting, closely linked to pop-art. Fed up with introspection, these artists went out into the street and observed the world around them, a society of incipient industrialization and tourists. Their themes critically analyzed the political situation in Spain, as well as the History of Art, for which they were inspired by classic works such as Picasso's "Guernica" or Velázquez's "Las Meninas". Their style was a unique blend of realism, criticism, pop, pictorial quotations, anachronisms and bittersweet pastiches. In contrast to the grandiose and picturesque image of Spain that Franco's regime wanted to project abroad, Equipo Crónica focused on a darker and more somber image of the country, always resorting to irony. Starting from their own direct style, with clear images that everyone could read, they tried to make a "chronicle of reality", a sort of social realism but using current visual systems. The group produced paintings, sculptures and engravings, and used to work in series, which allowed them to analyze the same subject with different variations. Equipo Crónica starts from a very simple language, with monochrome and repeated images, very close to contemporary media, especially newspaper photographs. 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.