SOLBES, Rafael (Valencia, 1940- 1981)
VALDES, Manolo (Valencia, 1942)
TOLEDO, Juan Antonio (Valencia, 1940 - 1995)
20th Century Spanish
A collective founded in Valencia in 1964 by Manolo Valdés, Rafael Solbes and Juan Antonio Toledo. Shortly afterwards Toledo abandoned the group, reducing it to the duo of Valdés and Solbes. Responding to the ideological crisis of the time, they adopted the strategy of shared production of their artworks as a reaction against the prevailing notion of the romantic individualism of abstract painting. Their painterly style was powerfully influenced by
An art movement that emerged at the same time in the United Kingdom and the United States in the mid-twentieth century, as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism. The movement drew its inspiration from the aesthetics of comics and advertising, and functioned as a critique of consumerism and the capitalist society of its time. Its greatest exponents are Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) in England and Andy Warhol (1928-1987) in the United States.
, as one can readily see in the iconography, flat colours and depersonalised drawing.
In the 1970s, the narrative drive of their work gradually gave way to more painterly concerns, both in terms of subject matters, culled from the history of art, as well as in their technique which now embraced a restrained use of volume and compositional effects such as
trompe l’oeil. The political or social content of their best-known series:
Autopsy of a Trade, Black Series and
Game of Billiards was always coupled with a rethinking of the very act of painting itself. The group came to an end on Solbes’ death in 1981.
