The poster is a cry

“The poster is a cry”, a means of conveying a message of protest, demand or celebration. Between the 1960s and 1970s, the great figures of Catalan culture –Joan Miro, Salvador Esperio, Alexandre Ciresi Pellicer s Manuel Vazquez Montalban– They looked at a young artist, attracted by poetry, who had developed a personal language that became universal, an art motivated by collective values ​​and commitment to culture, language and tradition. Philadecans Posters It is the new exhibition that includes the largest selection of posters painted by the Catalan painter Joan Pere Veladecans Which can be visited until September 1st Museum of the History of Catalonia.

Sponsored by the literary critic Julian Guillamon, Philadecans Posters It is a solo exhibition of the Barcelona painter, which allows us, through a chronological journey, to discover the development of his artistic language and its proximity to the collective imagination of Catalan culture. His posters – for decades – took center stage on the streets of Catalonia, and were always linked to the social and cultural movements of the time. At the same time, Guillamon explains, “Villadecans’s work is not a message in a bottle that needs to be deciphered, but a universal language that can be interpreted and read in many ways,” a language full of symbols, objects, and algebras. Geometric shapes and forms that the artist treats as a puzzle: “I feel comfortable with all the readings that have been done and are about to be made.”

For Viladecans, the exhibition has become an open window, an opportunity to share the work that the artist has crafted – throughout his career – “in the isolation of the studio,” as the commissioner explains. His extensive works have been divided into different stages that allow the visitor to observe the process of artistic transformation in a linear manner, starting from his pictorial beginnings and fascination with the body and its flat representation until approaching conceptual art and searching for something new. Expressive forms in contact with nature, an art that, without ceasing to be symbolic, becomes organic.

“I feel comfortable with all the readings that have been done and will be done.”

Concentrated throughout the exhibition are posters made by the artist for films, plays, exhibition halls, poetry festivals and books in favor of the Catalan officialdom as well as human rights and social values. From the Catalan Culture Conference on Radio 4 to the Passion of Olisa or Feria d’Abril in Barcelona, ​​his works spoke for themselves without ceasing to be true to their essence. Art galleries such as Sala Gaspar in Barcelona have regularly hosted Viladecans exhibitions since the late 1960s. These became a center of culture and reflected new interests, reflections and a sample of the development of their art.