Josep Renau (1907-1982), master of photomontage, was a Spanish artist compromised with social advance and progressiveness. In the difficult years of the Spanish Republic (1931-1936), he aligned himself with the legal government of the left, being a compromised member of the Spanish Communist Party. After the Civil War exploded, Renau was named Director General of Fine Arts. From his position, he reignited the production of propaganda posters, believing in the power of image and words against the threats of Fascism, in Spain and around the world.
What John Heartfield did in Germany, artistically and personally responding against the Nazis in shape of aggressive photomontages denouncing Hitler’s regime, Josep Renau did in Spain. He was the first Spaniard to introduce and use photomontage massively, believing the poster had a social function, and thus, after 1937, being the Head of Fine Arts, covered the half-Spain loyal to the Republic with colorful, vibrant posters full of energy and the power to convince the population to stand by the Republic and resist the attack of the Fascists.
Renau also coordinated the evacuation of the Spanish artistic treasures from the Prado Museum and elsewhere to Switzerland. Besides, and more famously, he instrumented the organization of the renowned Spanish Pavilion for the World Fair in Paris, 1937. In the midst of a highly political decade polarized between Communism and Fascism, the small but powerful Spanish pavilion outstood among the massive architecture and looks of the Soviet and Nazi German pavilions nearby. The pavilion was a “who’s who” of the arts in Spain, all aligned with the Republic and leftist beliefs: Josep Lluis Sert was the architect, aided by Luis Lacasa; Picasso painted the Guernica for the interior, Alexander Calder designed a Mercury Fountain in memory of the miners of Spain, Joan Miró contributed a painting, “Catalonian Peasant with a Sickle”, and Julio Gonzalez the iron head of the “Screaming Montserrat”, the cry of a Spanish peasant woman against the war. Outside of the pavilion, a sleek, tall surrealist sculpture was installed, the work of Alberto Sánchez: “El Pueblo Español Tiene un Camino que le Conduce a una Estrella” (“The Spanish People Have a Path that Leads to a Star”).
But neither the artistic posters of political propaganda nor the famed and celebrated Spanish Pavilion could help win the war, and after the Republic was defeated and a Fascist dictatorship headed by General Francisco Franco began a military bloody rule of Spain, Josep Renau, with him millions of defeated Spaniards, chose the exile rather than a life under oppression. Spain got sucked of its brilliant minds and brains. Not only the avant-garde artists that had made of Spain an outstanding nucleus of creativity and modernity but doctors, scientists, professors, writers fled Spain seeking freedom. And in Spain, a wasteland of starvation, destruction, censorship and intellectualness remained. It was all grey and dark, for many decades to come.
For Renau, politically and personally committed to denounce oppression and injustice with his art, his career in Mexico and later in the communist East Germany was a life devoted to the revolutionary art of photomontage with strong political meaning. Ideologically armed, it was in East Berlin where he eventually gathered and published (1967) the series “Fata Morgana USA- The American Way of Life”, which he first envisioned in Mexico, 1940, living near the United States of America, and completed between 1952 and 1966, both in Mexico and East Germany.
Relying on images from Time, Fortune, The New York Times, Renau sought to expose the other side of the American Dream: alienation and objectification of women, machismo, sexuality and censorship, Hollywood; corporate power, oil kings; racism, racial inequality, lynching, Southern bigotry, white supremacy, hatred; violence, crime, war; the Hiroshima genocide, the Saigon brothel, Vietnam; capitalism, militarism, hunger, injustice; imperialism, abuse, aggression, interference in other countries; death penalty, McCarthyism, paranoia, suppression of liberties; religious hypocrisy; poverty, social inequity; ignorance, popular culture.
Renau dealt with America’s darkest side at a time when America was being harshly criticized for the Vietnam War, but also, still, always, mystified. Whilst the American Pop artists were exploiting the machinery, consumerism and popular culture that aroused in post-war America with little to none critical achievement, Renau chose, from his political commitment, to attack, brutally and pitilessly, the lies, contradictions and hypocrisies of the United States.
His sympathy with the struggle of African-Americans for their rights was unparalleled in the artistic field. The capacity of his photomontages to move, inspire and provoke thought and reflection is truly remarkable.
Josep Renau was to post-war, capitalist America what Heartfield, Grosz and Dix were for the Weimar and Nazi eras of Germany. A critical conscience anchored in deep believes of social, racial and human equality. Despite the contradiction of his art being created under a communist military dictatorship with little respect to liberties and personal expression like East Germany, which he supported, the power and force of his raw art remain present to this day, periodically reaffirmed by the events that shape America and hence the world.
I cannot but totally agree with the statement Josep Renau wrote for the 1967 edition of his “Fata Morgana- The American Way of Life”:
“quite contrary to what is being put forth in commercial and tourist advertising, life in USA is forcibly more complex, contradictory and dramatic than the promoters and apologists of the “American way of life” would like to admit”.
That I have discovered since I am an American. Nothing is more mentally challenging and personally troubling, but also rewarding, than the struggle of accepting America, its darkness and brightness. Whereas, in art, a Roy Lichtenstein carries the optimism and content of the Americanness, the extraordinary art and achievements of Josep Renau bring us the bleakness, the necessary look at the other half and side of what is still a wondrous nation.
