The Department of Cultural Action, Heritage, and Cultural Resources inaugurates on Tuesday, March 12th, at 7:00 p.m., at the Municipal Exhibition Hall of the Town Hall, the exhibition “Rafael Contreras and the Mongrells”.
Rafael Contreras Juesas (1933-2017) was one of the foremost representatives of poster art in our country. He belonged to the artistic lineage of the Mongrells, the painters and poster artists José Mongrell Torrent (1870-1937) and Bartolomé Mongrell Muñoz (1879-1938), great-grandparents of Rafael Contreras, from whom he inherited his vibrant palette of colors, so present in his works.
Rafael Contreras was a great promoter of graphic design in Valencia, introducing the specialty at the Faculty of Fine Arts, coining the term “Valencian School of Poster Art”; publishing numerous books and studies on Valencian poster art; fostering its recognition as one of the Fine Arts; promoting poster contests of the Valencia City Council; and, indeed, influencing with his mastery numerous generations that have passed through the classrooms at the School of Arts and Crafts and at the Faculty of Fine Arts of San Carlos.
As a recognition of his figure and trajectory, and of the artistic lineage to which he belongs, the realization of an exhibition entitled “Rafael Contreras Juesas and the Mongrells” is proposed, in which it is hoped that the world of current design will have significant participation, both in the creation of the exhibition and in the testimonies of current designers who have written and opined about the artist, patiently collected by the researcher Jose Miguel Arce.
The exhibition can be visited until September 8, 2024.