Art and politics they are the foundations of the life of Josep Renau. Painter, photomontage and muralist, explored the artistic vanguards of the twentieth century from the perspective of social commitment and communist militancy.
Josep Renau begins his artistic journey in his native Valencia. At the age of thirteen, he entered the San Carlos School of Fine Arts and, later, thanks to a job in a lithography workshop, he entered the world of posters and graphic illustration.
He also felt his political commitment from very early on; reject elitist art and advocate for it to reach out to people. He began to associate with anarchist groups and, finally, in 1931 he entered the Communist Party to whom he will be faithful all his life.
It develops influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism and wins some poster competitions. But it will be the works of the German photo editor John Hartfield that will show you how art can contribute to social transformation.
Shortly after the Civil War began, Renau was appointed general director of Fine Arts. Organize the transfer of the works from the Prado Museum to the Torres de Serrano in Valencia, within the rescue operation of the Spanish Historical-Artistic Treasure. Shortly after, he traveled to Paris to carry out the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition. There he proposes to Picasso the realization of the central work, which will finally be the Guernica.
After the war he went into exile in Mexico where he created, together with the Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, the famous mural Portrait of the bourgeoisie for the headquarters of the Mexican Union of Electricians. In the American country he is going to occupy himself, mainly, with making movie posters, a job that he considered nourishing and of which he was never proud. However, there begins what, according to critics, will be his best work, The American way of life, a series of photomontages where he criticizes the American way of life, using the tools of advertising itself.
In 1958 Renau moved to East Germany to dedicate himself solely to political work. Although he faced the state bureaucracy, he manages to make some outdoor murals that he considered a good example of public and collective art.
Spain reappears in its last years of life. Receive an invitation to participate in the 1976 Venice Biennale, where you will have the opportunity to fully exhibit, for the first time, your series The American way of life. Although the Manises city council offered him a workshop to settle in Spain, death surprised him in Berlin in October 1982.
RNE Documents covers the life and work of the Valencian artist by the hand of Modesta Cruz, which has the participation of Art historians, Miguel Canadas Y Jaime Brihuega; his biographer, Fernando Bellón; and the illustrator Javier Parra, who has mounted The future worker in communism, a mural designed by Renau, but failed to produce.
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