Equipo Crónica

EQUIPO CRÓNICA (Valencia, 1964 - 1981).
"Crónica contra política", 1969.
Oil, collage and ink on paper/cardboard.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 26 x 37 cm; 60 x 71 cm (frame).
This work belongs to the first stage of the group, at the end of the 1960s, when its visual language clearly adopts strategies close to pop art to articulate a direct criticism of the socio-political context of Franco's regime. In this initial moment, their style is characterized by the use of collage, the appropriation of media images and the hybridization of historical and contemporary references, resources that are deployed here with special intensity.
The composition combines disparate elements that generate a deliberate tension: historical references such as the tomb of St. James the Apostle coexist with images from the visual culture of the moment, press clippings, children's figures, building a fragmented space that refers to information saturation and ideological manipulation. In the center appears a naked figure with a tie and Galileo's face. The textual language reinforces this satirical dimension through slogans such as "MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR", which introduce the international pacifist imaginary in contrast with the Spanish reality of the moment, generating an ironic and dissonant effect. At the same time, the presence of floral motifs clearly refers to the serial and colorist aesthetics of Andy Warhol, whose influence is key in this early phase of the group.
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 basis 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 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.