JOSEP RENAU BERENGUER
Valencia 1907 - Berlín 1982

He was born in Valencia on May 17, 1907, son of José Renau Montoro, restorer, painter and academic professor at the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia. His pictorial conceptions were archaic and provincial, although he had solid technical training and a dense knowledge of art history. In September 1925, his father enrolled him in the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia. Renau reacted with virulence against the stiff teaching he was given and was temporarily expelled from the school. 

He later combined the lithographic work instilled by his father with his studies of Fine Arts, and in 1927, he managed to graduate brilliantly. He joined a group of anti-Sorollistas: The Ballester Vilaseca brothers, Tonico and Manuela (the latter would become his wife in 1932), among others. His post-Sorollista stage is, therefore, brief and covers only his first years of apprenticeship, until 1925, attested by a few naturalistic paintings: Portrait of Gloria (1922). From 1925 until 1929, the young Renau adopted the pseudonym of Renau Beger, entering fully into the Art Deco modernity that dominated Valencian illustration during the twenties, which was based on the most decorative avant-garde fauvist, cubist and futurist styles. Through the lithographic companies, Renau would opt for graphic design, poster design and commercial advertising. 

Renau exhibited for the first time at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid (1928), achieving resounding success. His colorful sensitivity, his frivolous and cosmopolitan themes, his beautiful, select and inconsequential modernity caused a furor. He received the praise of the Madrid elite.
 In June 1929 he published his first pamphlet protesting Valencian academicism, and soon after he began to collaborate with Valencian nationalist publications and with the renovating group of the Sala Blava. 

In 1930 Renau, influenced by the surrealists, while connecting with the Valencian anarchist insurrectionary movements and practicing his first photomontages under the influence of Max Ernst, embraces the art deco style.  On the other hand, he is an artist who relates to the surrealist avant-garde and makes paintings and photomontages indebted to that artistic current. In 1931, he discovered the canonical Marxist texts, after which he joined the Communist Party of Spain. Between 1932 and 1936 and he was a drawing teacher at the Sant Carlos school. He incorporates the most advanced of the revolutionary plastic arts of his time linked to the graphic world, and at the service of the communist revolution. This period opens with Renau's collaborations in two magazines; the anarchist, Studios, and the anarcho-syndicalist Orto, both published in Valencia.

They are photomontages of agit-prop content (agitation and propaganda) in black and white and with an evident revolutionary severity. In March 1934 Renau embarked on a new path, the series of photomontages in color. 

In January 1935 Renau founds the Marxist magazine “Nueva Cultura”, and he was co-director with Max Aub since 1936 of the newspaper “Verdad” a union organ of the socialist and communist parties. When the Civil War breaks out, Renau is appointed, at the age of 29, director general of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture. In Madrid, Renau gave a strong dynamism to the General Direction, focusing above all on the tasks of the historical-artistic patrimony, with the transfer of the collections of the Prado Museum to Valencia. 

At the beginning of 1937, he published his famous text Función social del cartel publicitario. He became one of the main poster designers of Republican Spain. Influenced by post-Dadaism and Russian constructivism, with certain touches coming from socialist realism or commercial advertising. The following posters stand out: El Comisario, nervio de nuestro ejército popular (The Commissar, nerve of our popular army). In April 1938 Renau ceased as general director of Fine Arts. Shortly afterwards he was entrusted with the direction of Graphic Propaganda of the General Commissariat of the Central General Staff, with the rank of Battalion Commissary, a position in which he would cease in January 1939.

He made the constructivist posters destined to illustrate The Thirteen Points of Negrin (1938) for the International Fair of New York. In February 1939 Renau left for exile and in June he settled in Mexico City. Between 1939 and 1950, he began his first Mexican stage, bifurcating in the cultivation of two different genres. On the one hand, mural painting, following the teachings of David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. On the other, graphic design, mainly magazine and book covers, movie posters and commercial advertising. In mid-July, he participated in the mural: Portrait of the bourgeoisie at the headquarters of the Mexican Electricians Union. In March 1940, he published his first cover in Futuro magazine. Shortly after, he received awards such as the First Prize in the United Hemisphere International Poster Competition of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York (1942), the First Prize in the UN Poster Competition (1946), among other prizes. In 1946 the construction businessman Manuel Suárez commissioned him to paint a mural for one of the halls of the Casino de la Selva, in Cuernavaca. After finishing the Cuernavaca mural, Renau founded in 1950 the graphic design workshop Estudio imagen, publicidad plástica. This marked the beginning of his second Mexican period, characterized by a massive production of adocene movie posters, and the start of his masterpiece, the series of photomontages The American Way of Life, which he would finish twenty-five years later. 

At the end of 1957 Renau did not see his artistic future in Mexico. So, in 1958 Renau moved to Berlin. He worked as a graphic designer in films and later as a mural painter. Renau's main artistic activity between 1958 and 1961 revolved around the Deutscher Fernsehfunk (German Television) of the GDR, for which he made at least eight animated graphic films. 

In 1961 Renau published some brilliant photomontages in the magazine Eulenspiegel. That same year he publishes the book Fata Morgana USA, where a good part of his masterpiece, the series of photomontages The American Way of Life, will appear.  Renau's mural paintings in the GDR can be divided into two stages. The first, from 1959 to 1966, is a period of trial and error and the production of minor works. The second, from 1967 to 1980, is the true muralist period of Renau in Berlin. From 1967 to 1974, he worked for the Advisory Office for Plastic and Architectural Arts in Halle-Neustadt, where he was commissioned to decorate the Training Center for the Ceramic Industry with mural paintings. After many problems, together with Karl Rix, Ernest Reuter and Marta Hoffmann, he managed to complete the work.  The mural consists of three huge ceramic murals: The The Youth's March into the Future, Man's Mastery of Nature and Unity of the Working Class and the Founding of the GDR.  

In 1974 Renau achieved the highest artistic recognition in the GDR. By 1975 Renau moved away from the exclusive promotion of committed art to defend the thesis of the social functionality of the artistic object. Renau was again recognized in Spain for his participation, in 1976, in the Spanish Pavilion of the 37th Venice Biennale, where he exhibited the series The American Way of Life, where he criticizes the sociological and political situation of the United States in the fifties and sixties. 

That same year he returned to Spain to participate in the First Mostra d'Art Actual del País Valencià in Morella. From then on he lived between communist Berlin and post-Franco Spain. Renau received public recognition as a great Spanish artist in May 1978. He shared space with Joan Miró and Josep Lluís Sert. A month later he announced in Valencia the donation of all his work to Valencia. This was the product of what would become the Renau Foundation. 

From 1978-1979 and until 1982, two characteristic notes can be highlighted in Renau's plastic art. The first is above all a supreme act of freedom in an artist who had always worked in one way or another on commission. The second is due to the sudden mythification of the Republican poster of the Civil War. 

In 1981 Renau was preparing his definitive return to Spain. He was going to settle in the Valencian town of Manises and set up a collective studio-workshop, which he called Tartull. Renau died on October 11, 1982, in communist Berlin and was buried in the Friedrichfelde, where the remains of the anti-fascist fighters rest.

Since 1987, the Renau Foundation has deposited the work of José Renau in the IVAM, with the mutual agreement to promote the works of this excellent artist.

Author's file: Royal Academy of History,  Hispanic History