Spanish Artist, Composition, 1960s, Lithograph

Ricardo Zamorano Molina

Valencia, Spain, 1923 - Madrid, Spain, 2020

Popular Stamp of Madrid

Madrid, Spain, 1959 - 1981

Date: 1960s

Technique: Woodcut and linocut on paper

Dimensions: Image: 43x 34 cm / Support: 53 x 43 cm

Edition/Copy number: 176/500

Ricardo Zamorano was born in 1923 in Valencia, there he studied art at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Carlos. He traveled through Europe and was the founder, together with José Duarte, Antonio Saura and others, of Estampa Popular n Madrid (the first network of anti-Franco plastic artists that appeared in Spain at the beginning of the 1960s), whose objective was to transmit a critical message. and social and anti-Franco character to his contemporary citizens.

The objective of Estampa Popular de Valencia was to transmit a critical and social message of an anti-Franco nature to its contemporary citizens. To do this, they used figurative, clear and direct art that could be assimilated and understood by all levels of society, especially by those most popular. His iconography addressed very diverse themes, but always in line with the problems that society suffered under the dictatorship of the Franco regime.

Within a situation as critical and tense as the one Spain was experiencing, a large number of artists decided to put aside the more subjective informalism that had predominated until then to join, through a figurative and clear style, this popular contest. . Specifically, Estampa Popular de Valencia is inspired by the American and Anglo-Saxon pop art prevailing in the international art scene, applying this aesthetic to its personal objectives. On the other hand, they are also inspired by French New Realism (Nouveau Réalisme) and popular Mexican prints.

Regarding its more specific stylistic aspects, art historian Ricardo Marín states that “the clarity and forcefulness of the contents has its correspondence in the compositional clarity and simplicity. The images are very simple.”6 That is to say, what they intended was to seek in each case the correct balance between form, image and communication.

Left-wing Spanish artists felt closer to Mexican sensibility and aesthetics, in the translation of their vision of the world to painting or engraving, than to the already outdated Soviet social realism.

Estampa Popular had, with greater or lesser importance, its own existence in several important cities, such as Valencia and Barcelona. In all cases the characteristics of their techniques were similar: they started from critical and social realism, and carried it over to printing. That is, the representation of the social reality of a Spain, largely agrarian, under the boot of a military dictatorship. The prints, which were intended to be accessible to the working classes, were made with wooden boards and linoleum, with strong contrasts of black and white, and expressiveness and vigorous lines, as corresponded to the social message that was wanted to be transmitted. Sometimes it is based on press reports, scenes from poor neighborhoods, or verses by Miguel Hernández.

Art was the tool of struggle that these Estampa Popular artists used against the Franco regime of the moment.
In original condition with signs of age in the paper in wooden frame with protective glass