La salita, 1970

"El Constructor" by Equipo Cronica.  Color serigraph.  (29in  H x 21.25in W)  Excellent condition, archivally matted and framed.

In the early 1960 various groups of  Spanish artists put forward new figurative tendencies.   They developed a style in line with "social realism" that enabled them to condemn political situations, as well as, renew artistic techniques applied to images.  

In late 1964, three painters from Valencia—Rafael Solbes (1940–1981), Manuel Valdés (1942), and Juan Antonio Toledo (1940–1995)—abandoned that group and formed Equipo Crónica. After Toledo's departure the following year, the team was left with two members and eventually came to an end with Solbes' death in 1981.

The name of the group, which can be translated as Chronicle Team, clearly refl ects the style its members were seeking. Their work was a "team effort," one that avoided the effects of subjectivity, as evidenced by the fact that they did not sign their paintings individually. On the other hand, the term "chronicle" refers to the journalistic style that inspired the themes of their paintings, including current events. In order to meet these objectives, they borrowed ideas from modern or old comic strips and popular imagery from art history, with which they constructed an artistic language used as an instrument for sarcastic yet subtle criticism. Here, based on the world-renowned painting Las Meninas by Velázquez, they create a Pop Art version in which the Madrid Alcázar hall is transformed into a petit bourgeois living room decorated with commonplace furniture. As Velázquez did in his time, the painters portray themselves as part of the group in the picture.