Josep Renau

JOSEP RENAU, (Valencia, 1907 - Berlin, 1982).
"Joan Fuster.
Silkscreen on paper, copy 73/100.
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 63 x 47,5 cm.
Painter, photomontage and muralist, Josep Renau was also Director General of Fine Arts between 1936 and 1939, during the Second Republic. As a child he showed an innate facility for drawing, and soon entered the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia, where his father, José Renau Montoro, was a professor of drawing. At the same time, he began to work in the Ortega lithography shop, where he learned this technique. Around this time he began his career in the Art Deco style, and in 1928 he held an exhibition in Madrid that made an excellent impression on the public. At the age of eighteen he won his first poster competition, and in fact his movie posters were appreciated both in Spain and abroad. He also worked in photography and murals. A Communist Party militant, during the Civil War he made posters in support of the Republic, and after the war he went to France and, from there, to Mexico, where he worked for Spanish magazines in exile and collaborated with the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. In 1958 he moved to the German Democratic Republic, settling in East Berlin. There he made important murals and series of photomontages. After his death, his works were bequeathed to the IVAM in Valencia.