Dau al Set

The Contemporary Art Museum begins its 2010 schedule with the Dau al Set exhibition, organized by IberCaja, commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the publication of the first issue of the namesake magazine and confirms the indisputable contribution of this group to the contemporary culture of our country. This exposition is a small tribute to both the group and photographers, gallery owners, publishers and critics ... that made possible this rush of modernity.

It is now over half a century since the formation of Dau al Set, whose brief but intense existence increases over time the importance of their proposals in the wake of contemporary art during the fifties in Barcelona, also in the grip of aesthetic renovation thanks in part to other arts groups contemporaries like Portico Group Zaragoza, Madrid's El Paso or Task Group 57.

In September 1948, he published the first issue of the magazine also gave name to the group, "Dau al Set" - "the seventh face of the dice" in December 1952 and the last, which did not prevent que was constituted, undoubtedly one of the most important journals of the publishing landscape art of the moment. It was a publishing heir, in a sense, the Algol magazine was published only a number.
Its founding members were the poet Joan Brossa, who named the group and magazine, the philosopher Arnau Puig, Joan Ponç painters, director of the magazine, Antoni Tàpies, Modest Cuixart and Joan-Josep Tharrats, editor and printer of the same . Shortly after he joined the polygraph Juan Eduardo Cirlot.
Assigned, in principle, the Dada movement, Dau al Set discoursed by the hyper-realism, surrealism and existentialism to converge in a style outside the cultural atmosphere of the first dark franquismo, and claims to boost the Catalan society.

Dau al Set converged on artists from the worlds of art, poetry and thought. A group that despite the diversity of its members remained united under the surreal nature of their proposals and the adoption of a disparate artistic language-as noted Concepción Gómez, curator of the exhibition-as absolute shelter of his liberty. All this in a moment that surrealism had lost some of its effectiveness and importance and has held its last World Exposition in Paris in 1947. Despite the diverse origins of the group members shared a common iconography of between the Catalan avant-garde before the Civil War-Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró and foie JV and Paul Klee, whom the magazine devoted a special issuecommemorating the tenth anniversary of his death.

The exhibition is structured around two blocks: the art, which comprise some forty paintings and drawings signed by Tàpies, Cuixart, Tharrats and Ponce. And the documentary, which exhibited varying numbers of original "Dau al Set", used as support to field test platform territory of initiation and promotion. In addition to how a space for creativity with the claim that their language during the first phase of Franco.

The members of "Dau al Set" began collaborating together since 1946. However, its most intense phase was concentrated between 1948 and 1951, a period in which it participated in several exhibitions and displayed a significant editorial work. Importantly Unicambeing jointly presented twice: in 1949, the French Institute of Barcelona, and the Board Caralt (Barcelona) in October 1951. The first exhibition was organized by the collective Cobalt 49 and helped the French Institute of Barcelona, an institution that in those years advocated the unique cultural exchange possible at international level, in addition to award scholarships to artists in Paris. Sample that participated in the painters Antoni Tàpies, Joan Ponç and Modest Cuixart. In the second entitled "Dau al Set", presented papers throughout the group, besides Arnau Puig and Juan Eduardo Cirlot.

Despite the handicap posed by the minimum general information about the art came from Paris, Dau al Set took advantage of the advantage of having among its members with some representatives "survivors" of the vanguburned in the thirties ADLAN group, especially Joan Prats Joaquim Gomis, both friends of Miró and the poet JV Foix. They gave the young artists of Dau al Set information on international trends. It was vital sponsorship and active support of the then young critics Alexander Cirici and Cesareo Rodriguez-Aguilera.

In 1954 the group disbanded. Despite its short existence, Dau al Set became the first major resistance-culture references postwar Spanish.