Art Madrid'23 – Lillian Bassman Pinceladas exhibitioon Loewe Foundation Madrid

The photographer Lillian Bassman revolutionized the world of fashion photography adding the sense and sensitivity of femininity in her images. Now, the Loewe Foundation honors this charismatic woman.
"My contribution has been photograph the world of women's fashion with the feelings of a woman seen through the eyes of another woman". Lillian Bassman, self-demanding, rigorous and wildly creative, had clear that her work should not go unnoticed and, with the same discipline that she was dedicated to painting and dance, she flipped on giving uniqueness and elegance to your pictures. 
 
The "Pinceladas" exhibition, shows for the first time in Spain the work of this American artist of Jewish origin that transformed fashion photography giving it shades of paint and developing treatments - long before the invention of Photoshop - to reveal not only an image, a moment or a style, but also feelings and sensations. "I was interested in creating a vision that went beyond what the camera saw," said Bassman... And it seems she made it.
Bassman lived a great time in the Art Department of Harper's Bazaar, from where she filled fashion magazines with the sophisticated females of the Happy 30's, after the Second World War. From that time, for example, you can see the legendary photograph "Across the Restaurant. Paris 1949". 
 
But the years passed and the happy world of fashion and advertising also changed. In the 70s, the photographer, disappointed by the direction its sector took and in which "there was no room for experimentation", made a radical turn in his career and destroyed many of his films. Luckily, his aides hid some of the material and, as a result, Lillian Bassman was rediscovered in the 90s, already turned 80. Bassman returned with renewed strength and experimented with acids, tissue paper, smoked lenses...
After a successful exhibition in New York in 1993, she received orders from major firms and trendy journals, and. in 2004, the work of Lillian Bassman was awarded with the Lucie Award for his unquestionable and unique contribution to fashion photography in the forties and fifties. 
 
A few months before his death, at ninety-four, Bassman was working on your pictures through the computer: "Here I am, it is not the lab but experimenting with the computer it's also fun."
 
Curated by Maria Millan, the exhibition is framed in PhotoEspaña 2014 program and you can enjoy it at Loewe Foundation (Serrano, 26 Madrid) until 31 August. Then, it will travel to the headquarters of the Foundation in Barcelona until 9 November.

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.