Communism, Popular Frontism and Cultural Cold War: Josep Renau’s Essay in Exile (1945-1965)

Abstract

Josep Renau’s essayistic work during his long exile in Mexico and Germany allows us to approach the intellectual trajectory of the photomontage artist from a new perspective. Beyond his work as a visual artist, Renau found in the essay the ideal medium through which, starting from the political and cultural principles developed during the Popular Front period of the Spanish Civil War, he could negotiate with the new conditions that the Cold War imposed on the lives of exiles. His intellectual practice –mediated by the changing political conditions of exile, by the evolution of artistic and cultural discourses, and by the complex realities of his militancy in the PCE– allowed Renau to carry out an interesting analysis of the period of the cultural Cold War, remaining always faithful to the principles of cultural Popular Frontism.