In 1942, Vicente Bayarri Lluch, a Valencian entrepreneur, founded the El Turista Fallero magazine, a publication that kept on being edited for the last eighty years. Throughout the decades, this magazine became a true icon for culture and the fallero collective.
Despite the arrival and consolidation of digital possibilities and resources, the El Turista Fallero magazine survived and strengthened as a printed publication entity, clearly betting on the design, quality and plurality of graphic languages. Thanks to the emotional charge impregnating its pages, the magazine always manages to arrive on time to its yearly appointments with members of the Valencian festive culture, as well as followers of the fallas festival from all over the world.
It’s with the momentum of that exponential growth that, in this exhibition, we present the magazine’s development during the last eighty years, with its changes in graphic style, layout, typographies, etc., a true reflection of the artistic, graphic and plastic evolution that occurred in Valencia’s fallas. Exhibition for the aesthetic progress of Valencian illustration, the covers exposed from 1942 to 2021. It can be contemplated from the first cover (1942) made by Peris Aragó, a peer of Renau y Segrelles at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia, who was part of the so-called “renovación artística valenciana de los años treinta” (Valencian artistic renovation of the 30s) generation; to the last one (2021) made by Paco Roca, a magnificent Valencian illustrator who pays homage to all the magazine readers and followers with his proposals.
Along with all the original issues of the magazine, the exhibition also presents works by relevant fallas artists (David Moreno, Gio, José Gallego, Sergio Amar, Miriam García Sandemetrio), who submerge us into the festive culture ideology. Through this exhibition, the Universitat de València recognises El Turista Fallero’s long history and importance.
