Equipo Crónica

Pop art has been represented in the IVAM Collection since its beginnings, and has been a fundamental line in our research. The collection includes works by representative artists such as Richard Hamilton, James Rosenquist, Öyvind Fahlström, Claes Oldenburg, Valerio Adami, Eduardo Arroyo and others. The inclusion of Equipo Crónica grounds the collection solidly in the historical memory of a period in Spain that was much more than a mere artistic tendency. To the team’s political confrontation with the Franco dictatorship must be added their continual analysis of classical Spanish art (Velázquez and Goya, principally), and international modernity from the early twentieth century to their own time.

Equipo Crónica was founded by Rafael Solbes, Manuel Valdés and Joan Antoni Toledo (who was only a member for a year) in 1965 after an exhibition organised by Vicente Aguilera Cerni in October 1964 at the Ateneo de València. During the same period, another representative group, Estampa Popular de Valencia, was also founded, whose similarities with Equipo Crónica were merely formal, as Solbes and Valdés’ main premise was their socio-political commitment to criticise the Franco regime and its curtailment of freedom using aesthetic reflection as one of their tools. In the exhibition was a text by the historian and critic Tomás Llorens, who was one of the main architects of the IVAM’s creation in the late 1980s, and a supporter of Equipo Crónica’s work in the Institut’s early acquisitions for its collection.
After the death of Solbes in November 1981, Equipo Crónica disappeared, after an intense, fruitful and committed trajectory, thoroughly represented in this exhibition. The IVAM Collection holds more than one hundred works by the team, including paintings, drawings, engravings and posters.