In 1964 the Franco dictatorship was witness to the birth of one of its most energetic critics: Equipo Crónica. In order to do their work, so similar to the esthetics of American Pop Art, they used resources from the press. This gave their images that cold feeling, transmitted by masses of flat inks with no shading.

Equipo Crónica’s original nucleus was formed by Juan Antonio Toledo, Manolo Valdés and Rafael Solbes, although Toledo left the group a few years later. Valdés and Solbes continued their career as a group until 1981 when Solbes died, leading to the inevitable dissolution of the Equipo.

Their work was decidedly figurative. Narrative through criticism. They showed a demystifying attitude towards Art and had no qualms about reinterpreting the greatest historical masters such as Velázquez, Picasso or Saura. They defended working as a group with homogeneous productions and an abundance of series.

Their political tendencies were made clear by means of the sarcasm with which they dealt with the situation of the Spanish people under the Franco dictatorship, and they attributed a social function to Art. This led them to renounce the postulates of Informalism, a movement that until that time had led the renovation of plastic art in Spain.