Haya un panorama de ojos abiertosRevisión historiográfica de Equipo Crónica (1964-1981)

Abstract

The aim of this doctoral thesis is the Valencian artistic group Equipo Crónica (1964-1981). Although it is well known by the Spanish art history (thanks to art historians like Tomàs Llorens, Valeriano Bozal, Anne-Michèle Dalmace, Ricardo Marín, Caroline Kesser, José Carlos Suárez, among others), as we study its career we realize that there are still questions to be unraveled.Composed by Rafael Solbes Solbes (1940-1981), Manuel Valdés Blasco (1942-) and Joan Antoni Toledo Mansanet (1940-1995), the latter only during the first year, Equipo Crónica was one of the longest-lasting artistic groups of the Spanish art. Its work consists of more than 650 paintings and drawings gathered in twenty series, more than 100 serigraphs and 28 multiple sculptures, among other works. At the end of 1965, the historian Mario de Micheli took Federico García Lorca’s verse “Let there be a panorama of open eyes” to treat the work of Equipo Crónica (Sleepness City. Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne, 1929-30), synthesizing one of the main question of this artistic group: the ideological impulse that moved its construction. Equipo Crónica professed a realistic attitude towards the rise of Informalism that had prevailed in the previous decade (the fifties). It was influenced by mass culture and Pop Art, as well as other artistic movements (Figuration Narrative, New Realism, New Figuration). It was one of the first critical speeches against the Franquismo, from the field of painting, progressively becoming a relevant voice of the Franquismo’s opposition, revealing the mechanisms of media manipulation of the regime and, subverting the symbols and icons that it used...