Josep Renau

JOSEP RENAU, (Valencia, 1907 - Berlin, 1982)."Auto parking", 1982.Silkscreen, copy P.A. .Signed and numbered in pencil.Measurements: 69 x 49,5 cm.With certificate of authenticity.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 San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia, where his father, José Renau Montoro, was a drawing teacher. At the same time he began to work at the Ortega lithography studio, 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 which made an excellent impression on the public. At the age of eighteen he won his first poster competition, and his film posters were appreciated both in Spain and abroad. He also worked in photography and murals. A Communist Party militant, during the Civil War he produced 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 produced important murals and series of photomontages. After his death, his collection was bequeathed to the IVAM in Valencia.