Crónicas de Papel

In Spain, one of the landmarks of rebellion against established art was reached by a group whose critical temperament sought theoretical coherence in the sociocultural milieu. When formulas and styles looked as though they were running out in the context of the conception of useful art, work with a purpose and the trend of Estampa Popular Valenciana (1964-67), El Equipo Crónica appeared, made up of Manolo Valdés, Rafael Solbes and Joan Antoni Toledo, who, by means of different formats, achieved transplasticity by taking different elements from their sociocultural reality, from the mass media whose influence was starting to have great force. In this way, El Equipo Crónica articulated a language with well defined parameters: the chronicle, historical narration in a journalistic format to provide an informative testimony whose iconic ingredient is fundamental. A visual chronicle, then, which translated the debates of the time into a language that the public in general was able to understand: anticlericalism, repression, utopia, the inheritance of abstraction, the avant gardes, etc. This exhibition, where drawings are the protagonists, constitutes a chronicle of reality as a way of endowing painting with an elevated purpose, a raison d’être in our society and in the historical framework of positive contemporary values.