Equipo Crónica

In 1964, a group of artists tired of the dominant informalist trend in the Spanish artistic landscape of the time decided to create a movement that would reflect on the representation of reality. Thus was born Equipo Crónica, founded by Manolo Valdés, Rafael Solbes, and Juan Antonio Toledo, although the latter soon distanced himself from the group. Valdés and Solbes continued their work as a collective until 1981, when Solbes' death ended that team effort whose trajectory developed during the last ten years of Francoism and the democratic transition.
Equipo Crónica creates decidedly figurative work very close to the pop art aesthetic. A painting that critically analyzes Spain's political situation by drawing on resources from journalistic chronicles, the language of mass media, comics, advertising, and art history itself. In this way, they cast an ironic gaze over myths by placing well-known situations and characters in different contexts, contributing to the demystification of images and questioning the role of art in relation to Spain's political and cultural situation.
Their work is structured around series of works that allow them to analyze the complex social, cultural, and political reality of 1960s Spain beyond what they could do in a single painting, thus creating an enriched and nuanced discourse with multiple approaches and versions of the same idea. Recovery, The Subversion of Signs, Autopsy of a Craft, By Way of Parable, The Dark Series, Police and Culture, and Billiards are some of the series through which they represent both historical events and consumer society but also art history and the very craft of painting.