<\/span><\/p>\n The painter Juan Genovés passed away on May 15, 2020, at the age of 89. We acknowledge his work and his personal career. We also show our gratitude for your collaboration, whenever requested by the CCOO. We do this in particular for his participation in the exhibition \u00abSolidarity and Art\u00bb, organized by the Cipriano García Foundation in 1997 ( more information<\/a>). In that exhibition, which inaugurated the temporary exhibition hall of the Museu d’Història de Catalunya, works of recent production of the artists were exhibited along with pieces with which they had participated in the historic exhibition \u00abAmnesty that deals with Spain\u00bb, inaugurated in Milan in the spring of 1972, in an act of solidarity of plastic artists, poets and singers from different European countries with the movement of the Workers ‘Commissions and the workers’ leaders imprisoned during those years. It was the year of the so-called \u00abCarabanchel Ten\u00bb, when following the arrest of most members of the General Coordinator of Commissions on June 24, during a meeting to discuss union unity held in the convent of the Oblates of Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid), the so-called \u00abProcess 1001\u00bb began, by which CCOO leaders were imprisoned in Carabanchel, tried by the Court of Public Order and sentenced to sentences ranging from 20 to 12 years in prison.<\/span><\/p>\n Juan Genovés, who began his career in the 1960s, was then a committed communist militant and was so until the late 1970s. During the previous decade, the series of his paintings showed crowds mobilized and linked to the phenomenon of repression and torture suffered by members of the \u00abordinary resistance\u00bb to the dictatorship.<\/span><\/p>\n Genovés’ work is personal and irreducible. Although there is no doubt that one of his paintings has made him clearly recognizable and certainly associates his work with a universal message. We refer to the pictorial work known as \u00abEl abrazo\u00bb, made in 1976 by the Valencian painter, and which has ended up becoming an icon of the transition from dictatorship to democracy in Spain. This is possibly the artist’s most popular work. This is acrylic paint on 1.50 by 2 meter canvas. \u00abEl abrazo\u00bb is a painting in which, as usual in the rest of Genovés’ work, human figures are presented, although this time they are people, mostly men, with outstretched arms, with a predisposition to comfort themselves and expressing an attitude. of celebration. Its author has emphasized that the message of the picture is the one of the reconciliation of the Spaniards by whom many fought in those years.<\/span><\/p>\n It contributed to the popularity of the so-called \u00abEmbrace\u00bb that, at the request of the opposition Democratic Board to demand the release of political prisoners, it was reproduced in poster format by Amnesty International during those years of political change in the country. The word \u00abAmnesty\u00bb was chained together in a lower horizontal strip. AI played half a million posters. This led to an immediate increase in the number of posters that the author had donated for dissemination.<\/span><\/p>\n On the other hand, the bloody attack on a group of lawyers and an administrative, members of the PCE and CC.OO., in the office located on the third floor of 55 Atocha Street, on January 24, 1977, confirmed a new meaning to the image of Genovés. His connection to that tragic event was established from the fact that in that office, something typical of anti-Franco circles, the Amnesty sign was hung on the wall and during the murder of the young people it was stained with blood, as the film portrayed. 7 days of January ”(1979) by Juan Antonio Bardem when reconstructing that terrible scene. The symbol began to acquire a new dimension, since its identification with the struggle for political and social freedoms was superimposed on a denunciation of the act committed by members of the Spanish far right. In this way, two stories are related, that of the painting and that of the poster that is sold out in all its editions, so that today the image brings together the titles of \u00abEl abrazo\u00bb and \u00abAmnesty\u00bb indistinctly.<\/span><\/p>\n Years later, in 2003, that image became the sculpture \u00abEl abrazo\u00bb, made by Genovés himself on behalf of the CC.OO union. It was on the occasion of the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the date on which the murder of the members of the labor office took place. The piece is located in the Plaza de Antón Martín in Madrid, about fifty steps from the place, as indicated by a tombstone on the portal of number 55. However, it was not until January 24, 2007 when the commemorative plaque was placed that informs younger passers-by about the monument and its significance.<\/span><\/p>\n Genovés’ painting, however, had its own itinerary. The painting has its own story and is worth remembering. In the same year of its creation, 1976, the painting was acquired by a Chicago collector at an auction held in New York. He returned to Spain as a result of the efforts made by the UCD government headed by Adolfo Suárez, from 1977, in consideration of the political significance expressed by the work. This would not prevent the subsequent tribulations of a painting that today has ended up symbolizing political change in Spain <\/span>. According to the artist himself: “The painting came, but the right-wing forces kidnapped it and it did not appear. They hid it on the orders of right-wing people. Customs had passed, we had documents from the customs and delivery at the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, in the University City (now the Costume Museum). But the picture was not. The news of his disappearance even appeared in the newspapers. Some museum workers, members of Workers’ Commissions, went to look for him and finally found him lost among a pile of boxes in the last corner. It was tucked in a box, which in turn was inside another box lying on the floor ”( more information<\/a> )<\/span> Finally, in 1988 \u00abEl abrazo\u00bb entered the collections of the Reina Sofía Art Center, after the arrangement of the funds of the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art as the predecessor center of the National Museum. Again, there was his \u00abdisappearance\u00bb, preserved in the warehouses of this art gallery, until in 2012 the table of the Congress of Deputies requested a temporary transfer from an initiative of the parliamentary group of Left Unity and, finally, was ceded by the Reina Sofía Center.<\/span><\/p>\n Since January 7, 2016, the painting is on display in the lobby of the Congress building along with pictorial representations of the kings of Spain, the busts of the presidents of the Second Republic Manuel Azaña and Niceto Alcalá Zamora, and the precursor of the female vote in Spain, Clara Campoamor. It could be said that today \u00abThe Embrace\u00bb is a symbol that has been connoted, diluting the political burden of the moment to convey an ecumenical and conciliatory message as a story of transition; but it has also been accumulating a semantic load that has allowed for various political uses.<\/span><\/p>\n Today we want to give our last hug to Juan Genovés.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Article by Javier T\u00e9bar, director of the CCOO Historical Archive of Catalonia, Cipriano Garc\u00eda Foundation for the death of Juan Genov\u00e9s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","infinite-scroll-item","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccoo.cat\/ciprianogarcia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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