UNTIL SUNDAY 1/9
THE SHIP. University, 2
"Behind a great woman there is always a great man". We have turned the controversial popular saying upside down to introduce you to the Valencian Manuela Ballester, portraitist, poster artist, typographer, muralist, record label, graphic designer and illustrator, tireless creator who managed to develop her work with five children in charge and far from home, between Mexico and Germany, where he had to be exiled for his opposition to the Franco regime. Many times he put his creations at the service of the communist cause and anti-fascist propaganda, when he still lived in Spain, and from exile. Here is the wonderful poster Vote for the Popular Front! that you can see in La Nau made for the general elections of 1936, where a clergyman, a rich man and a blessed woman pull on the lap of an empowered woman who is heading to vote. I was married, per cert, with teacher Josep Renau, with whom he collaborated doing, among many other things, the typography of advertising and cinematographic posters. But enough of Renau, here she is throw. Manuela Ballester. Paint in front of everything collects work spread across several countries by a versatile artist who experimented with numerous artistic languages. Sewing was one of her main interests. She loved designing the clothes she and her family wore, he bought the fabrics and sewed them with his mother, who was a dressmaker. His interest in clothing began in the late twenties and in the thirties he collaborated with women's magazines such as Work and fashions. Of 1939 is the series Ambassadors with full-length female figures representing different ambassadors dressed for a party in their countries' costumes, with a clear influence of the surrealist Giorgio de Chirico in some of them. Throughout the exhibition you will find numerous examples of figurines designed by Ballester for this and other projects such as the one made around the Mexican folk costume, there to Mexico, where he created his own collection of Mexican clothing. The context was favorable, since the first decade of the 20th century, popular art had become one of the main focuses of attention of artists who, with Diego Rivera, make folklore a central theme. In an untitled series that you can see in the sample, Ballester models small-scale women's bodies with plasticine, he sees them elegantly within carefully lit scenographies and transfers them to paper by photographing them from different angles. He also illustrated magazines, was the artistic director of Spanish women (1951), designed movie posters, made advertisements and packaging designs, together with Renau he painted the mural of the Hotel Casino de la Selva in Cuernavaca, portrait of family and friends, he made drawings and linoleum prints denouncing social injustices for magazines like popular Spain o Republican Spain, he painted the cold German landscapes… A total artist that La Nau brings out of the shadows to pay him a well-deserved tribute. S.M.
