UNTIL SUNDAY 10/7
DEPUTY OF VALENCIA. mountains, 2
Josep Renau is the paradigm of the politically committed artist who understands art as a tool of agitation. Their posters didn't just offer information, that too, rather they invited individual and collective mobilization by touching the key of emotionality. Already out to emphasize the importance of agricultural production, voluntarism in the defense of the government legitimately elected by the people, the dangers of five-columnism or the confidence in final victory. Hence the recurring flags, the weapons and working or fighting hands that act urging the viewer to act: "Peasant. "Defend with arms the Government that gave you the land.". this one, that of the political poster, is the most important block of the exhibition Josep Renau and the time of the images that unfolds in its premises of the Diputació de Valencia until the month of July. But the journey begins more gently, with harmonious and elegant forms that transform the traditional theme into a cosmopolitan modernity. Renau, at its beginnings, embraced innovative movements from Europe such as art deco, permeated in its advertising and tourist posters. See here the famous Las Arenas spa poster that combines the aforementioned Art Deco with influences from Russian Constructivism and in which he uses the airbrush, one of many modern techniques with which the Valencian artist experimented. He also mastered the technique ofscratch, gouache and photomontage on posters marked by a political commitment that took him away from the Avant-garde to bring him closer to Heartfield. Precisely this militancy forced him to go into exile in Mexico (then he would go to East Germany) lost the Civil War, where he developed a visual full of progressive values with direct allusions to the national and international political situation, like the photomontages where he satirized the myth of the American dream to which the IVAM—guarantor of Renau's legacy—dedicated an exhibition to 2021. In Mexico, Renau earned a living designing cinematographic posters - a task he had already developed in the 1930s imbued with art deco at the service of the Valencian production company Cifesa -, like the one announcing the film adaptation of La Barraca by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Festive culture promotion poster (years 20-30), committed (Second Republic), cinematographic (Mexican exile) is what you can find in this exhibition dedicated to one of the most important Valencian artists of the 20th century for his ability to seduce and provoke at the same time embracing the hottest currents of the moment. S.M.
