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Exile And Montage: Josep Renaus Reckoning With Community And Self, Claire-Lise Bénaud, Suzanne M. Schadl

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper examines Spanish photomontagist, Josep Renaus artistic progression through two exiles (the first in Mexico and the second in East Germany) as an example in which an individual defines his cultural identity first in the context of community, a collective leftist-socialist identity, and then as Stuart Hall points out in terms of 'difference.' When history reveals to Renau his separation from the community, he has no choice but to find himself in an expression of difference — not from the home he makes for himself in Mexico so much as from the neighbor he must criticize in order to …