UNTIL SUNDAY 9/1
VAT. Guillem de Castro, 118
The IVAM has proposed an exhibition on Josep Renau where the context becomes paramount. As an institution in charge of safeguarding and disseminating the archive of the great Valencian poster artist from 1989 he has to devise new prisms with which to look at his work, i Renau y The american way of life is a proposal that emphasizes the personal and global circumstances that surrounded the activity of this introducer of the avant-garde in Valencia. Like the exile he was forced into at the end of the Spanish Civil War because of his communist militancy. This militancy took him to Mexico City where he collaborated with David Alfaro Siqueiros, and made him conceive of art as a political tool and to criticize the fierce capitalism of the United States. It also took him back to a German Democratic Republic devastated by World War II that was calling for muralists to decorate the walls of the new cities that were rising. Context, context i context, to, swirled in this exhibition with which the IVAM takes a swipe at the painter, poster artist, muralist, fotomontador, professor, political agitator and theorist Josep Renau.
The first part of the exhibition focuses on the activity of Renau in Mexico. Two pyroxylin paintings by one of the most important muralists of the Mexican Revolution stand out here, Siqueiros, with whom he maintained a relationship of friendship and admiration that has been talked about very little. They were united by the fact that they both conceived of art as a tool for revolution. It has also been reproduced to scale 1:1 the innovative collective mural Portrait of the bourgeoisie what, conceived as a photographable photomontage, almost filmic, denounces the destructive power of fascism at the service of capital. The 20th century cannot be understood without the contribution of photomontage to visual culture and photomontages are the works that make up the series American Way of Life, which is exhibited in its entirety at the IVAM after thirty years. Here Renau brings shame to the American way of life by resignifying images taken from the mass media (like the magazine Life) who defined the myth of the American dream during the Cold War. Renau points to consumerism, class differences, the vietnam war, the colonialist vision of Cuba, religious hypocrisy, the death penalty, racism or militarization. The counterpoint is provided by the Soviet artist Alexaner Zhitomirski, that like Renau, It is going to inspire John Heartfield to criticize the american way, in your case, in black and white and with a slightly more ironic tone. It is the first time that his photomontages are seen in Spain.
The next part of the exhibition is dedicated to Renau's stay in the German Democratic Republic from 1958. It focuses on the participation of the Valencian, within a public program of integration of art and building, in the mural decoration of the buildings of Halle-Neustadt, a model city built for workers in the chemical industry that demonstrates that communist art was not monolithic or simplistic. Today muralism is experiencing a renaissance under the name of street art, and current earth artists like Vinz Feel Free seem indebted to Master Renau. All you have to do is stand in front of the work Miss América and the birdson court Miss two men with sparrow heads. The validity of Renau's work and the influence of his art today explain why it is necessary to continue to claim it, ara i always. AU
