Art: 13 Points in Montage

By printing from several negatives on the same paper, photographers can produce either: 1) composite photographs, in which the images are superimposed; or 2) photomontages, in which they make a composition. Combinations and variants are innumerable. To one school of photographers this technique is a low-grade amusement or else commercial fakery. Photomontage, however, was first used for serio-comic artistic purposes by the Dadaists around 1919, was later developed in Germany by Experimenters Moholy-Nagy and Walter Peterhans (see p. 50). It has been ably used for posters by Soviet Artist El Lissitzky, Swiss Herbert Matter, Hollander Cesar Domela-Nieuwenhuis, German Herbert Bayer, and badly used in many a U. S. journal. Out of Spain last week came a set of photomontages that contained at least two masterpieces in this kind.

Distinguished by an almost total absence of Dada clutter and by a powerful employment of Surrealist scale, lighting and perspective, the montages were the work of 40-year-old Jose Renau of Barcelona. For two years Leftist Director General of Fine Arts, charged with guarding Spanish art treasures and with planning the Spanish Pavilion at last year’s

Paris Exposition.* Artist Renau quit his Government job two months ago to do some work of his own. First thing he did was to make 13 photomontages, in some instances blending painting and photography, to illustrate by symbols the 13 points of Premier Juan Negrin’s program for Spain.

More complex than ordinary posters in that they interpret abstract political aims, the Renau montages are best on the simplest points. To illustrate Point Il, “Liberation of our territory from foreign military forces which have invaded it,” the artist combined a silhouette map of Spain with a stormy night cloud, set against it a blasted tree gripping Spanish ground with talons, showed bayonets advancing in daylight over a peaceful plowman to drive away Death (see cut}. For Point VIII, “Through agrarian reform to liquidate the old semifeudal aristocratic estates,” Artist Renau produced his most effective picture: a smiling, stubble-faced farmer holding a rustic pitchfork, with furrows ribboning behind toward a village and three bulls stylized with long morning shadows (see cut).

*It was announced in Barcelona last week that the New York World’s Fair will have a similar pavilion, decorated with frescoes by Luis Quintanilla (TIME, March 28) and Joaquin Suner.