Sources and graphics strategies of Estampa Popular de Barcelona (1965-1967)

Abstract

Comunicació presentada a la conferència anual de la Fundació Història del Disseny, celebrada el 2011 a Barcelona.Estampa Popular de Barcelona, the prints for the people project was developed in Barcelona between 1965 and 1967, with the aim of bringing together avant-garde artists to publish and promote a portfolio of economical prints with an overt political agenda, taking advantage of the first signs of cracks in the Franco regime. The artists involved abandoned their habitual artistic practices to adopt models and strategies that were closer to graphic design. Their motive was to ensure the most effective transmission of their critical and insurgent ideology. At a time when Spain was still firmly within the grip of the censors, it was one of the first attempts at a graphic critique that played with both the explicit and the subtle, in a hybrid proposal that interwove art and design. Significantly the theme of many of these prints did not allude to the reality of Spain but were more of a critique of the international situation, in particular of the United States. The modern and critical graphic design explored by the Estampa Popular paved the way for the apparition of satirical magazines such as Hermano Lobo (Brother Wolf) in the seventies. In the Spain of the late Franco years, Estampa Popular was revelatory, as much for what it achieved as for its relative failure