Showroom Alicante Market presents a special evening on Friday at 19.30 that centers on a presentation catalog tied to a long dialogue across time. The event signals a deliberate dialogue between two generations of visual thinking, inviting visitors to explore how memory, art, and political commentary intersect in poster art and photo collages. The focus is on how dialogue can unfold in a work, how conversations between artists echo through the rooms, and how the pieces speak to each other within the exhibition space. The public will have the chance to engage as a live interview with Pepe Calvo unfolds, allowing questions about his career, his creative approach, and the conversations he has maintained with Renau, with Calvo’s own artworks surrounding the discussion.
Josep Renau, born in 1907 and passing in 1982, used art as a tool for justification and political critique. His practice relied heavily on posters and, above all, photo collages that left a lasting mark on later generations of creators. After the Civil War, Renau sought exile outside his homeland, spending time in Mexico and later shaping his later years in East Berlin. His career is remembered for the way it fused technique and critical voice, turning images into compelling arguments that could travel beyond borders and time. The exhibition situates Renau within a broader arc of political art, showing how his confrontations with history resonated with audiences across decades and continents. The encounter with Calvo reveals how the visual language of Renau continues to influence contemporary photographers and artists who investigate social realities through image and form.
Pepe Calvo, a photographer born in Alicante in 1947, is a figure who discovered a new visual world when Renau’s work crossed paths with his own. From that intersection, photocollage emerged as a central mode of expression for Calvo, yet it carries a cinematic quality and a reflective personal universe that distinguishes his work from the political rhetoric associated with Renau. Calvo’s approach invites viewers into a space where image and memory act like moving frames, capturing moments that feel both documentary and artistically intimate. The presentation highlights how Calvo translates historical dialogue into a contemporary practice, showing that his camera lens can both document and interpret with a poetical touch that remains rooted in real human experience.
Works from IVAM are part of the story, with eleven pieces by Renau brought into view and four of the thirty-five works that Calvo presents. The pieces by the Valencian artist belong to his American lifestyle series, created during his exile in Mexico after the Civil War and later edited during his time in East Berlin. This selection allows visitors to trace how two distinct geographic and political contexts gave shape to different modes of image making. The juxtaposition invites a deeper reflection on how exile and displacement influence artistic choices, and how the language of collage can carry complex layers of meaning that travel across borders and eras. The surrounding curation makes the encounter between Renau’s and Calvo’s works feel inevitable, a meeting place where ideas cross paths and histories illuminate one another.
The goal of this curated exhibition, which can be experienced in the Alicante Fish Market hall, is to illuminate the conversation between two artistic universes. The curators emphasize the value of comparing Renau’s documentary impulse with Calvo’s personal storytelling, showing how both artists use the medium of image to question the world around them. The presentation runs through October 29, inviting visitors to explore the evolving dialogue that ties these bodies of work together. The setting at the market hall adds a unique atmosphere, turning a public space into a gallery where history as lived experience meets contemporary practice. The exhibition promises a thoughtful, multi-layered experience that resonates with audiences who are curious about how art reflects political and social realities across different moments in time.