Exhibition “El Víbora. Comix Countercultural”

• June 21 to September 29
• Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Àlex Mitrani, lecturer at the Master's Degree in Research in Art and Design at EINA, is the curator, with Antoni Guiral, of this exhibition homage to El Víbora (The Viper) and its authors on the 40th anniversary since the publication of the first issue of this mythical comic book. It changed the lives of more than one generation in the 1980s and 90s.

EINA collaborates in this exhibition with the cession of the painting that the artist Roger (Roger Subirachs) made in 1987 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the centre. And it is also present with the Live comic that was made in the avant-garde Galeria 13 of Barcelona in 1980 for the 13th anniversary of EINA, called Amor en Vallvidrera. To make this work, of 1.80m x 24m, a series of authors gathered among the main protagonists of the underground, some of them already working for El Víbora. The spirit of the magazine, loaded with what today is called "political incorrectness", runs through this collective and performative work in which the society of the time is criticised, from conservative sectors to progressism [hardest option: "from conservative nationalism to salon progressivism"]. The work also testifies to the links between the authors of Barcelona's undergound and some of the promoters of the Movida Madrileña.

After all these years out of public view, Amor en Vallvidrera has entered the MNAC collections and is currently being restored for its next exhibition.

Authors identified: Peret, Gallardo, Roger, El Hortelano, Mariscal, Max, Montesol, Isa Feu, Roger, Martí, photographies by Ouka Lele.

The exhibition brings together the photographs taken by Manel Esclusa, teacher in the Design degree and coordinator of the Postgraduate Degree in Photography and Editorial Design of EINA, on the creative process of this piece.