Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Don Sebastián de Morra [Don Sebastián de Morra]

Image caption
EQUIPO CRÓNICA

Don Sebastián de Morra [Don Sebastián de Morra]

  • 1980
  • Polychromed stone
  • 21 x 19,5 x 18 cm
  • Cat. E_127
  • Acquired in 2001
By:
Isabel Tejeda

Equipo Crónica (1965-1981) recontextualised iconography and images from the history of art and the history of Spain so that they coexisted with features from popular art and the mass media. This should be no surprise, given that Equipo Crónica was an offshoot of the Estampa Popular group in Valencia. The use of these images established a connection not just with a commitment to the mass media, consumerism and their dissemination as clichés of popular culture, but also with events from the history of Spain which were being used as propaganda by the Franco regime.

Equipo Crónica used both two-dimensional works —acrylic paint and graphic arts— and sculpture, mainly in plasterboard but towards the end of the group's lifetime also in fibreglass. They took the works of Velázquez as a model for their sculptures. The work in question here is Don Sebastián de Morra (1980), after the Velázquez painting of the same name, which depicted a dwarf who was employed as a fool at the court of Philip IV. This work is linked to a series of small-scale sculptures made in plasterboard and polychromed using acrylic paint. Almost as a joke, each one uses different references in its decoration: some —such as the piece in the Banco de España Collection— recall the works of Velázquez; others contain nods to Picasso's Three Musicians and other artists to which Equipo Crónica resorted as references. This piece is polychromed stone, which makes it a rarity in the output of Equipo Crónica. In 1982, after the death of Rafael Solbes, the Maeght Gallery produced a multiple of fifteen pieces in fibreglass from this same series, each one with different colours and designs.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Equipo Crónica
Valencia 1965 - Valencia 1981

Artists Rafael Solbes (b. Valencia, 1940, d. 1981), Juan Antonio Toledo (b. Valencia, 1940, d. 1995) and Manolo Valdés (b. Valencia, 1942) founded Equipo Crónica in 1964, immediately after leaving the Estampa Popular group. They had the support of art critics Tomás Llorens Serra and Vicente Aguilera Cerni, and it was the latter who drew up the new group's manifesto. In a reaction against the informalist style that predominated at that time, and with conscious political intent, they adopted a collective imagery based on the mass media and the history of art to draw up a critique of the Franco regime, of the prevailing social and political circumstances and of the role of art in society. This took the form of a unique version of international pop art, with links with Eduardo Arroyo and foreign artists such as Frenchman Gilles Aillaud and Italian Antonio Recalcati, who were introducing US pop art into their works from a critical standpoint. Their works consisted of iconographic series based on a theme, beginning with Recovery (1967- 1969) and ending with The Execution Wall (1976), which was presented at the Venice Biennale. In the late 1970s their work was mainly pictorial, themed around masterpieces of painting with the clear intent of 'setting the record straight'. Toledo left the group in 1965 but the others remained together until the death of Rafael Solbes in 1981.

Their first appearance was at the 16th Salon de la Jeune Peinture (Paris, 1965). After that they took part in various exhibitions intended to disseminate new figurative art and pop art in Europe, including La figuration narrative dans l’art contemporain at the Creuze Gallery (Paris, 1965), Le monde en question at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris, 1967) and the itinerant pop art exhibition Kunst und Politik in Karlsruhe, Wuppertal and Cologne (Germany, 1970). In 1976 they took part in the Venice Biennale and in 1977 retrospectives of their work were shown at various venues in Germany. Significant presentations of their work have also been held at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (1988), the Reina Sofía in Madrid (1989) and the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (1989 & 2005).

Roberto Díaz

 
 
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.