Equipo Realidad Collective - Joan Cardells (1948)/Divine Proportion or Le Divina proporción (1967)
Bernard Rancillac - At Last, a silhouette slimmed to the waist (1966) or Enfin silhouettes affinées jusqu'à la taille
He is one of the few Romanian artists associated with pop art, and one of the mentors of the group of younger figurative painters known internationally as the Cluj School. In the 1970s he got acquainted with contemporary American art and consequently embarked on a series of portraits, of both his fellow artists from Cluj and of Western pop icons, based on images seen in Western newspapers and magazines. Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania in the 1970s was the only period of his regime that was open to international exchanges, therefore even though travel abroad was banned, especially to Western countries, information about new experiments in art was disseminated. Counter-culture, music and art influences were experienced both through Western magazines found in reading rooms, or via informal networks of shared information. The German magazine Popcorn, for instance, provided a point of departure for some of his paintings, as well as his own experiments with solarised photography.
Cornel Brudaşcu’s paintings from this period include Guitarist, Youth On the Building Yard, Composition, Group Portrait and Portrait, all from 1970. They use pop art’s block colour and flat surfaces, but depart from pop’s sharp edges in the use of blurred boundaries and lack of definition.
His compositions often feature family members and close friends from his artistic milieu as, for example, in the painting Portrait (Ion Munteanu) dedicated to the deceased artist and close friend. At the same time, his paintings speak to the political context in which they were made under Communist rule in Romania. The title and narrative theme of Youth on the Building Yard, for example, is characteristic of official proletcult art of this period, whose ideological imperative was to form a new culture that would reflect the spirit of the collective and the desire to build a new Communist society.
Brudaşcu’s striking use of bright colour and his experimental use of photography, however, mark a departure from the ideologically sanctioned art of this period.
Proletcult – a portmanteau of the Russian words “proletarskaya kultura” (proletarian culture), was an experimental Soviet artistic institution which arose in conjunction with the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Isabel Oliver - The Family (1970-3) - paradoxical expectations around women's appearances that suggest the constrictions of social norms. Kiki Kogelnik - Hanginng (1970)
Equipo Crónica was founded in 1965 in Valencia by artists Rafael Solbes, Manuel Valdés and Juan Antonio Toledo. Toledo left the group shortly after their first exhibition. Emerging under the umbrella of estampa popular (popular print) and the influence of critics Vincente Aguilera Cerni and Tomàs Llorens, Equipo Crónica was in firm opposition to the abstract and informal tendencies championed by Francisco Franco’s administration. Solbes and Valdès signed a manifesto in 1965 establishing the group’s objectives to adopt a widely intelligible style that would reference everyday life. Among the most celebrated series that critiqued Spanish academicism are Guernica ’69 1969, in reference to Pablo Picasso’s iconic work, and Police and Culture 1971, reproducing contemporary art imagery combined with representation of the police, a symbol of oppression. Alongside other artists such as Eduardo Arroyo and Equipo Realidad, Equipo Crónica is associated with the artists who contested Franco’s regime, questioning its official culture as repressive.
***Concentration or Quantity becomes Quality 1966 belongs to an early series of works by Equipo Crónica, which manipulated photographs from the daily press. The black and white images of a developing crowd are presented on nine canvases in sequence in grey tones, denoting the threat posed by collective gatherings to Franco’s regime.
Kormar and Melamid - Post Art 1, 3 and 3 a (1973) - re-appropiated American works, copying reproductions
Chryssa Vardea - Study of gates No. 4 (1967) - use of Neon advertising as an art material
Beatriz Gonzalez - The Last Table (1970) - creating a dialog between
popular narratives and formal painting, incorporating mass produced
images into her work
