Equipo Crónica

EQUIPO CRÓNICA (Valencia, 1964 - 1981).
"Morning Edition", 1979.
Oil on thick cardboard.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Provenance: Maeght Gallery, Paris.
Work referenced in the catalog raisonné by M. Dalmace "Equipo Crónica: cataloguing, graphic and multiple works (1965 - 1982)".
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by Manolo Valdés, member of Equipo Crónica.
Measurements: 105 x 76 cm; 109 x 80 cm (frame).

"Edición Matinal", from 1979, is a work in which Equipo Crónica (Rafael Solbes and Manolo Valdés) moves away from its use of pop imagery to investigate other aspects of art history, especially in certain constructivist and post-minimalist tendencies, relating a type of patchwork art with the evocation of the pages of a newspaper. In this way the political critique is more veiled than in other works. The title "Morning Edition" suggests a reference to newspapers and visual communication, which could link the work to Russian Constructivism's interest in mass media and graphic design. Although visually it does not have the satirical charge of his most iconic pieces, the use of muted tones and a rigid structure could be interpreted as a metaphor for the Spanish political transition in those years, marked by uncertainty and the precarious and deceptive recomposition of the country after Franco's dictatorship. Likewise, this work is an important link in the trajectory of the artist duo, close to the turning point in which Manolo Valdés will continue his solo artistic career. Thus, we can also interpret that it departs from the narrative pop imaginary to enter into a more open formal and conceptual exploration, anticipating Valdés' interest in texture, composition and materiality in his individual career.

Equipo Crónica, or Crónicas de la Realidad, was a group of Spanish painters active between 1964 and 1981. It was founded by Manolo Valdés, Juan Antonio Toledo, who soon left the group, and Rafael Solbes, whose death in 1981 put an end to the project. The historian and critic Tomás Llorens was also a member of the group. He explains the theoretical bases of the Equipo in a text entitled "La distanciación de la Distanciación" (The Distancing of Distanciation). Likewise, the three painters signed a manifesto in 1965, where they defined themselves as a working group with collective methods and supra-individual goals. Equipo Crónica moved away from the prevailing informalism to cultivate a figurative painting, closely linked to pop-art. Fed up with introspection, these artists went out into the street and observed the world around them, a society of incipient industrialization and tourists. Their themes critically analyzed the political situation in Spain, as well as the History of Art, for which they were inspired by classic works such as Picasso's "Guernica" or Velázquez's "Las Meninas". Their style was a unique blend of realism, criticism, pop, pictorial quotations, anachronisms and bittersweet pastiches. In contrast to the grandiose and picturesque image of Spain that Franco's regime wanted to project abroad, Equipo Crónica focused on a darker and more somber image of the country, always resorting to irony. Starting from their own direct style, with clear images that everyone could read, they tried to make a "chronicle of reality", a sort of social realism but using current visual systems. The group produced paintings, sculptures and engravings, and used to work in series, which allowed them to analyze the same subject with different variations. Equipo Crónica starts from a very simple language, with monochrome and repeated images, very close to contemporary media, especially newspaper photographs. There are works by Equipo Crónica in the IVAM in Valencia, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Juan March Foundation and the Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid, among others. In 2007 an exhibition dedicated to Equipo Crónica was organized at the Museo de Arte Abstracto in Cuenca.