[Today more than ever, VICTORY]. Signed:
Renau, 1938. SubPro. Graf. Ultra, SA, Córcega, 220, Barna. Lithograph,
7 colors; 99 x 138 cm.
This poster was issued by the Subsecretaría de Propaganda (Undersecretariat
of Propaganda), an office of the central government which was headed by
the renowned architect Manuel Sánchez Arcas. It was printed in Barcelona,
where the government of the Republic had moved after leaving Valencia on
October 31, 1937. The poster is an homage to the Republican Air Force, which
remained loyal to the government to a larger degree than other sections
of the military after the rebellion of July 1936. In the image, the planes
in the "V" formation display the flag of the Republic on their
wings. This is different from the red-yellow-red flag of the Spanish monarchy,
which was used before and after the Republic and remains the flag of Spain
to this day. Because of its close relationship with the Soviet Union, which
supplied it with planes and provided training throughout the war, the Republican
Air Force had strong communist sympathies. The poster may reflect the need
to boost morale in Barcelona, which was heavily bombarded by the Nationalist
airforces in the latter stages of the war.
Born in Valencia in 1907, Josep Renau was one of the artists most heavily
involved in the Civil War. In 1931 he became a member of the Spanish Communist
Party (PCE), and in 1934 he was arrested for taking part in a revolutionary
strike. On September 7, 1936, he was named Director General of Fine Arts
by a fellow communist, Jes£s Hernández, who was Minister of
Public Instruction in the government of Largo Caballero. Renau remained
in that post until April 1938 and continued to be involved in the propaganda
effort until he left Spain for exile early in 1939. As Director General
of Fine Arts, Renau's duties included the safeguarding of the artistic heritage
of Spain. He was in charge of evacuating from Madrid to Valencia the paintings
in the Prado Museum, which were threatened by the bombings. He was also
one of the organizers of the Spanish Pavilion in the International Exhibition
held in Paris in 1937, where he was instrumental in securing Picasso's commission
to paint a mural for the pavilion, which resulted in Guernica. Renau was
also an important force behind the conferring upon Picasso of the largely
symbolic appointment as director of the Prado Museum. During the war, Renau
designed numerous posters; as an artist, he specialized in painting and
graphic design, and gradually became interested in photography. He was successful
as a poster artist in the 1920s, winning numerous prizes and working on
the design of billboards for the film industry.
The gleaming image of the pilot in this poster may be a reflection of
this aspect of Renau's career. In 1929, he was one of the first artists
to use the technique of photomontage in Spain. He studied the work of John
Heartfield, who became his favorite artist because of his active political
stance and also because he favored photography over the more traditional
medium of painting. On one occasion Renau said, "Yesterday Goya, today
John Heartfield." In 1933, Renau participated in the first Exhibition
of Revolutionary Art held in Madrid (which included works by other artists
present in this exhibition: Monleón, Rodríguez Luna and PÉrez
Mateo). That year he also founded an important organization of left-wing
writers and artists, the Unión de Escritores y Artistas Proletarios
(Union of Proletarian Writers and Artists). In 1935 he founded and directed
the magazine Nueva Cultura, where in 1936 he published an important theoretical
manifesto entitled The Social Function of the Advertising Poster. After
the war, he was exiled to Mexico and became a Mexican citizen. He worked
with the mural painter Siqueiros, whom he had met during the war in Madrid,
on a mural for the new building of the Union of Electricians in Mexico City.
In 1958 he moved from Mexico to East Germany. After Franco's death in 1975,
Renau visited Spain periodically. He died in East Berlin in 1982. |
