Os Renovadores (the Renewers) or Os Novos (New ones) was a diverse group who wanted to renew visual Galician arts from the 1920s.
Artists
Maside, Souto, Colmeiro, Seoane, Eiroa, Mazas, Torres and Laxeiro are considered members of Os Novos; Jose Frau is sometimes named; Virxilio Blanco, who went young to Cuba, is also included. For their influence, Castelao, Camilo Díaz and Asorey are considered part of the group. Some others were the surrealists Granell, Mallo and Urbano Lugris, and, later, Maria Antonia Dans, Elena Gago, Angel Johan, Colombo, Cebreiro, Pesqueira, Concheiro and Bonome. Isaac Díaz Pardo, son of Camilo Díaz, continued the legacy of his family and renewed the forms of design and ceramics.
The precursors
In Séculos Escuros age there were efforts to preserve the dignity of Arts (Compostelan Baroque), Science and Education (by Sarmiento and Benito J. Feijoo), and Literature.
In the 19th century, there was a resurgence (Rexurdimento) in poetry. In painting, there is an affinity for romantic and post-impressionist landscapes influenced by Cézanne. Some Galicians, like Valle-Inclán, accused the artistic primacy of the Madrid-Valencia axis inside Iberian Peninsule.
Some promising artists died young and were called the 'Sick Generation'.
Precursor's gallery of images
The avant-garde
In Europe, the vanguards grew up. Some Spaniards (mostly Catalans as Miró or Dalí) went to France. In the 1920s, 'Group Nós' wanted to link Galician culture to Europe, and 'Xeración do 25' emerged ( literature renovators). Artists born in the 1900s and 1910s don't break with olders, such as Baliño, Castelao or Asorey, and they try to renew art tradition. Writers and designers gather around El Pueblo Gallego, which published both in Spanish and Galician.
In 1921, Santiago Ramón y Cajal gave Castelao a scholarship to learn about the avant-garde. For him, art must be universal and linked to the 'mother culture'. When he knew Central European art, he made some offensive comments about Picasso, who after his training in Galicia and Catalonia was creating Cubism in Paris. Castelao prefered the Russian new art because it was "linked to the people". Later, he published an essay saying that the vanguards could be "crazy, but not silly", and he wrote to the poet Manuel Antonio about old and new art roots. He spent one year traveling and he wrote in his diary:
Spanish people think that, to be universal, national artist (of the Galician nation) are asked to 'kill the regional spirit' and be Spanish (...) if you realize that art has no borders, it means that it is cosmopolitan. Why don't you ask us to 'kill the Spanish spirit'? (...) if Spanish art can come out of Spain, so can Galician, Basque and Catalan art.Carlos Maside traveled a lot. His work was shown in the US by the Carnegie Institute, along with Mallo and Souto. In Paris, he saw Gaugin and Van Gogh art. It influenced his work beyond Cubism, Magic realism, Expressionism and the Bauhaus professor Kandinsky. Maside made graphic works for the Autonomy campaign, collaborated with Seminar on Galician Studies, and suggested an Art Library in Santiago. He stayed in inner exile and made friends with younger artists like Laxeiro and his nephew Xulio.
Manuel Colmeiro was another artist who traveled a lot. After the war, he went into exile in Argentina, where he created murals in Galerías Pacífico. In exile, he interacted with artists like Seoane, Dieste, and Alberti. He moved to Paris in 1949 and in 1989 he returned to Galicia. In the 60s, he had exhibitions in London and won several awards in the 80s. He died in Salvaterra de Minho in 1999 at the age of 98. His daughter Elena Colmeiro was also an artist, specializing in sculpture and ceramics. Seoane talked to Freixanes about the concerns of students in Compostela during the first part of 20th century:
"Simplicismus" interested a lot, within the "art nouveau". The European artistic and intellectual center began to move from Paris to Berlin both in painting and the visual arts as well as in philosophical and political thought (...) Austria was also very present, Paul Klee, Grosz... All of this, although it may seem curious, it was known in the restless Galicia of those years.