Mission Impossible: Guernica. Pop Art, Equipo Crónica and Cultural Policy in Francoist Spain

In 1969, the Spanish collective Equipo Crónica presented its series Guernica 69. One image shows a package partly ripped, revealing its interior: Picasso’s Guernica. In another, Picasso’s painting is exhibited in a large empty room, with various authorities of Franco’s regime entering while other figures are trying to escape. A third one displays Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein over Guernica’s horse. In a metaphorical way, these paintings allude to the diplomatic efforts of Franco’s regime to recover Picasso’s iconic painting. Although Picasso had donated it to Spain, it was to remain in “custody” in MOMA until the restoration of freedom in Spain.

The Guernica 69-series refers to Picasso. The Recovery (1968) extends the reference to classic Spanish painting, while American Pop Art informs Autopsy of a Profession (1970-1971) and Police and Culture (1971). In all these works, the members of Equipo Crónica make a pictorial statement on the political tensions of their time. They appropriate paintings of the Spanish tradition combined with images from popular culture, transforming them in ways that are similar to those used by American Pop artists years before. But Equipo Crónica does so by means of overlapping heterogeneous elements to generate an ironic and complex message, which aims to be a “chronicle” of its time in the shape of a series of collages. Thus, Equipo Crónica proposes a kind of “third way” between Anglo-American Pop Art and Soviet Socialist Realism, avoiding both consumerism and propaganda, and adding a critical purpose in the message of its work.