Conversation between Álvaro Pons and Álvaro de los Ángeles about the exhibition “VLC. Valencia línea clara”

Conversation between Alvaro Pons, curator of the exhibition “VLC . Valencia línea clara” and Álvaro de los Ángeles, Assistant Director for Activities and Cultural Programmes of IVAM.

In the sixties and seventies, Valencia underwent a spectacular creative moment. The creative avant-gardes rushed in in the form of groups like Equipo Crónica and Equipo Realidad, who had a crucial influence on the young people starting their artistic studies at that time. Young creators who, furthermore, had been reared on the culture of the comic, which enjoyed a boom in Valencia in the forties and fifties. The comic that had attracted them during their childhood years had turned into a model of counterculture and modernity, a message of freedom and innovation whose first important exponent was Miguel Calatayud. His comic strips in the magazine Trinca unquestionably inspired a generation that was beginning to express itself by means of fanzines inspired by underground culture, but with its own distinctive personality. Javier Mariscal embarked upon a path on which he was soon to be followed by other creators like Sento Llobell, Micharmut, Manel Gimeno, Mique Beltrán or Daniel Torres.

The exhibition VLC. Valencia Línea Clara reviews this moment when the Valencian comic was at its greatest peak by examining the trajectory of seven of the major authors and showing the complex combination of influences that gave rise to that style and, besides, the in-depth relationship with their native city.