Josep Renau (1907-1982), an influential Spanish painter and graphic artist, found refuge in Mexico after the Spanish Civil War. His exile, beginning in 1939, led him to interact with and contribute to the rich development of the Mexican avant-garde of the 1940s and 50s, characterized by a deep social and political consciousness. Renau’s work at this time was significantly shaped by the horrors of war and the shifting political landscape of his time. In Mexico, he found solidarity and creative kinship with muralists like José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, whose commitment to public art as a means of education and social empowerment mirrored his own convictions. The cross-pollination of ideas among these artists enriched Renau’s approach, enabling him to synthesize European avant-garde styles with the vibrant cultural and political environment of his adopted country.

The painting Trópico from The Robledo-Palop Collection stands as a powerful testament to this period of Renau’s life. Created in 1945, this oil on Masonite captures the angst and devastation of a world freshly scarred by World War II, the Holocaust, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Renau’s palette is dark and somber, reflecting a world mourning its lost innocence, while the thick, textured impasto imbues the work with a palpable sense of urgency and despair. The landscape is barren, distorted by the destructive power man now wielded, and the skeletal remnants in the foreground are a chilling reminder of the cost of such power.

Renau’s iconography in Trópico is laden with emotional weight. The choice of a tropical setting, often associated with vitality and abundance, juxtaposed with the bleakness of death, creates a stark dichotomy that speaks volumes of the era’s disillusionment. The bones of a corpse stripped of flesh could symbolize the stripping away of humanity’s moral compass, a dire warning from the artist of the potential endgame of technological advancement unchecked by ethical considerations. This visual metaphor resonates with the deep unease of the post-war period, as the world grappled with the implications of its newfound destructive capabilities.

The Robledo-Palop Collection and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, signed an agreement for the exhibition of this painting in the museum’s permanent collection between 2016 and 2022. Renau’s Trópico was presented in conversation with the work of other artists in exile during the 1940s and with Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. In displaying Trópico alongside Picasso’s Guernica, a dialogue was formed between works that embody the angst and rebellion against war’s cruelty. The proximity to Guernica not only situates Renau’s work within the continuum of anti-war art but also amplifies its message by pairing it with one of the most potent symbols of wartime anguish. Trópico does not merely represent a geographical reality but becomes a symbolic landscape reflecting the emotional and existential crises of the 20th century. It serves as a poignant reminder of the exile’s gaze, one that carries the burden of witness and the responsibility of testimony, articulated through the language of paint and the eloquence of shared humanity in the face of destruction.