Poza at Grupo 13

Juan Poza ­­Tártalo cites how the collaboration with Federico Ribas and his admiration for the works of Rafael de Penagos and Bartolozzi gave rise to his interest in the poster. In the years that saw the poster become the showpiece of visual communication, Poza would produce more than three hundred, many winning awards in the congested “poster competitions” at the time. Put forward for Perfumería Gal, the San Sebastián Film Festival and the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, some of his works also received honours. Juan Poza was one of the founding members of Grupo 13, an artists’ collective which operated in Spain at a time which heralded the start of the mass production of communication messages and can be considered the dawn of an initial interest which would later become a consolidated profession. Grupo 13 was the first group in Spain (1961) to establish a collective of graphic designers, and the first to take a series of billboards “to the street” (literally to out to calle Alcalá in Madrid, between the plaza de Cibeles and the Círculo de Bellas Artes), helping citizens to discover this professional activity anew. In the introductory text on Grupo 13 (see previous post) […]