VALLADOLID.- The Sala Municipal de Exposiciones del
Museo de la Pasión (The Municipal Hall of Exhibitions at the Passion Museum) in Valladolid opened the exhibition "Dau al Set", which will remain open until January 18 and which conmemorates the 60th anniversary of the founding of this Catalan artistic group.
Dau al Set, the first post-World War II artistic movement in Catalonia, was founded in Barcelona in October 1948 by poet Joan Brossa. The avant-garde group had connections to the Surrealist and Dadaist movements and stressed the importance of both the conscious and unconscious in their works. The group's name, Catalan for "the seventh face of the die", expressed its rupturist character.
The exhibition, which will travel throughout Spain until mid 2010, gathers 40 lesser known paintings and drawings made by the artists.
The group had a popular magazine journal of the same name, Dau al Set.
In a beginning, one placed the group inside the dadaism movement, but Dau al Set moved between the hyperrealism, the surrealism and the existentialism. Finally, it created a proper style, close to the surrealism magic, across which they promoted the Catalan artistic and cultural renewal.
The group was inspired by the early works of Max Ernst, Paul Klee and Joan Miró. Members of Dau al Set included Joan Brossa, Antoni Tàpies, Joan Ponç, Arnau Puig, Modest Cuixart, Juan Eduardo Cirlot and Joan-Josep Tharrats. Antonio Saura, Enrique Tábara, and Manolo Millares were occasional contributors to the magazine journal. Dau al Set opposed both Formalism and the formal art centers.
The group dissolved in 1954.