Travelling exhibitions

JAN.20.2019 – MAR.31.2019

Fondation A Stichting, Bruselas

Time. Intimacy. Freedom.

Stopping in front of one of Nixon’s photographs is to enter into his vision of the human soul. With a uniquely heightened sensitivity and ability to capture detail and feelings, his images, of an extraordinary sharpness and compositional clarity, connect with the life experience of the viewer.

Nixon works on series that touch on fundamental aspects of human life, and one of them is the passage of time. This is very noticeable in his series of the elderly, his family scenes and is particularly evident in the celebrated series of The Brown Sisters.

Nixon portrays spaces and objects with a career marked by and devoted to portraiture, revealing the reality of his chosen subjects up-close. The use of large format cameras requires the proximity and collaboration of his subjects to be able to show the themes that interest him: the sick and the old, couples and his own family.

NOV.17.2018 – FEB.17.2019

San Francisco Museum of Modert Art (SFMoMA)

The photographer of Paris. Day-to-day life. Darkness.

When thinking about Brassaï’s work, we immediately conjure up scenes of Paris at night. From 1924, the year in which the artist moved permanently to the city of light, he found in it the main topic for his work. How the city was laid out, its daily comings and goings, and, above all, its vibrant nightlife fascinated him so much that he invested all his creativity in capturing Parisian life in such powerful and evocative snapshots that they have become undeniable cultural icons.

In 1968, when he was a well-recognized photographer, the MOMA organized a retrospective on Brassaï. And now, 50 years later, the work of this key proponent of 20^th century photography returns to us, from New York to demonstrate all his many artistic facets, from photography to female nude drawings, as well as the work arising from his trips for the magazine Harper´s Bazaar to Edinburgh, Italy, Turkey and Spain, and his interest in graffiti.

OCT.24.2018 – JAN.27.2019

Fundación Barrié, A Coruña

Knowledge. Poetics. Surrealism.

For Graciela Iturbide the camera is just a pretext for getting to know the world. Her work is a process of continual dynamic exploration which, over four decades, has focused on dreams, rituals, religion and travel.

«Although we reject our education, we carry it with us and it is part of us» says Iturbide when she is asked about her interest in symbols and rituals. And this photographer, a practicing agnostic, was brought up in a middle class Catholic and Mexican context, where symbols and rituals formed part of the language.

Moving between a documentary and a poetic style, her unique way of seeing the world combines live and dreams. Nature and culture, ancestral traditions, rituals found in everyday life and the symbology of objects occupy a central space in her work.

With Iturbide every image brings us back to the essential: life, death and pleasure. The things that make humankind and the world what they are.

SEP.29.2018 – DEC.02.2018

C/O Berlín, Berlín

Freedom. Closeness. Intensity.

Focusing principally on portraiture, and with an ability to bring out all the possibilities of his camera, through his work Nicholas Nixon offers us a world which encompasses the first glimpses of cityscapes in the 1970s, up until the well-known series of The Brown sisters. The elderly, the sick, the intimacy between couples and the family are just some of the themes that have captivated the artist throughout his career.

The slowness and absence of dramatic elements define a body of work which spans five decades. The American photographer employs a simple but flawless technique, with the use of a large-format camera which fosters the close proximity and cooperation of those being depicted.

Nixon gains people’s trust and manages to get them to show themselves naturally, which is what makes these images so vividly realistic and yet they do not lose their freshness despite being perfectly composed pictures. Nixon recognizes, brings forward and captures that which would never exist without his particular framing of it.

SEP.14.2018 – OCT.27.2018

Asociación Cultural Torres y Tapia

Cosmopolitan. Modern. Art Deco

Rafael de Penagos is considered as the artist that introduced Art Deco illustration into Spain. This illustrator played a fundamental role in modernizing Spanish illustration at the beginning of the 20th century and was the precursor to a new ideal of a modern and stylish feminine figure. The “women Penagos” are recognizable for their extreme modernity and sophisticated dress sense as well as their ways of behaving. They are a new kind of woman who has short hair, smokes and has a varied social and intellectual life.

The point of Penagos’ drawings was to introduce Spanish society of the time to new European trends. It was the ideal time to do so given that the openness of the 1920s was allowing for an aesthetic renewal to take place and any influences from the main European capitals were received with admiration.

Through the pages of magazines such as La Esfera, Blanco y Negro, Nuevo Mundo and ABC, and on the posters created for the Circle of Fine Arts and the companies Floralia and Gal, the artist portrays those “happy years of the 1920s” while configuring a new feminine ideal: “the modern Eve”.

Fundación MAPFRE owns the most important collection of Rafael de Penagos’ works, comprising around a hundred works, among which are original drawings and first editions of his published illustrations. This exhibition showcases some of these works.

SEP.12.2018 – NOV.02.2018

Fundación MAPFRE Guanarteme

Political caricature. Humor. Reflection.

Luis Bagaría (Barcelona, 1882 – Habana, 1940), trained in Catalan modernism, moved to Madrid in 1912 and got involved in the plans for national renewal backed by José Ortega y Gasset, firstly in the magazine España and, from December 1917 onwards, in the pages of the El Sol newspaper.

During a period in which censorship was rife, Bagaría managed to document and recreate the deterioration of the Restoration system and Primo de Rivera’s coup d’etat. With his particular drawing style and great ability to summarize events, through his caricatures Bagaría encourages us to reflect on a fairer world.

The Fundación MAPFRE collections house nearly five hundred of Bagaría’s sketches from the 1917-1926 period. A selection of about one hundred of these will be on display in Fundación MAPFRE Guanarteme from 12 September.

JUL.19.2018 – OCT.14.2018

Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile

Self-taught, committed and unconventional

Fascinated by photography from an early age, it was in 1972 when Paz Errázuriz (born in Santiago, Chile, 1944) began training herself as a self-taught photographer. From that moment her photography was a product of the period of Chilean history through which she lived: the fall of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government in 1973 and the establishing of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship which lasted until 1990.

Paz Errázuriz found that photography was the best way to defend the human rights of those who were excluded by the regime and by society. She fixed her attention upon those who, due to their appearance or circumstances, formed a marginalized and entrapped society: the mentally ill, the homeless, circus performers, transsexuals, prostitutes and indigenous natives. The black and white shots and the anonymous faces of misfit Chileans became a voice of condemnation of the regime.

She is a photographer who works with difficult and uncomfortable subjects, giving no concessions whatsoever to the viewer. The results of her unconventional way of exploring reality are the impactful photographs she has taken over more than four decades.

JUL.11.2018 – OCT.07.2018

BAMPFTA, Berkeley

Intimacy. Audacity. Encounter.

“I can express myself only through photography”. These words of Peter Hujar, an artist with a reserved nature, define a career which reflects an entire era, from the fifties to his death in 1987, and which can be seen in this exhibition of more than 150 works.

Peter Hujar was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1934 and grew up in the countryside until his mother took him to live with her in Manhattan when he was 11 years old. From this point onwards his life and his work were intimately linked to Downtown New York, where he shot portraits of artists he knew and respected such as Andy Warhol and Susan Sontag as well as other anonymous figures of the New York scene.

For Hujar, the encounter with the other person was of vital importance, namely the relationship between the artist and the person being portrayed, which would allow for the person to be captured by his camera in a natural way. His portraits reflect an atmosphere of intimacy with the person being photographed due to his way of taking photographs calmly and closely.

MAY.03.2018 – JUL.28.2018

Museo Ettore Fico

“When you look at my photographs you are looking into my mind”. These words of DUANE MICHALS hold the key to understanding his work and his philosophy on life.

Michals is one of the most prestigious names in North American avant-garde photography. Born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, in 1932, he continues creating to this day, at 85 years old, inventing forms and using new resources to communicate his feelings in the most precise way possible.

This original artist maintains that he was lucky never to have studied photography, as this enabled him to distance himself from the self-imposed norms of traditional photography. He is currently recognized as one of the artists who has done most to thoroughly renew the language of photography over recent decades.

Michals believes that the limitations of an individual image are insufficient to express its inner being. To overcome these limits he employs series, sequences through which he constructs a story, including handwritten texts on the developed copies.

An artist that hovers between photography, painting, theater and writing, Michals seeks to photograph, precisely, what cannot be seen.