Exhibition Arissa Fundación Telefónica in Madrid

Exhibition Arissa Fundación Telefónica in Madrid

Aug 27, 2014

art madrid

With his work forgotten for decades, Antoni Arissa regains its rightful position in the Parnassus of the photography stars of our country. The one in Fundación Telefónica is the first anthology of the author and will be open until September 14.

With two important curators such as Valentin Vallhonrat and Rafael Levenfeld, "Arissa, shadow and photographer 1922-1936" shows over 160 images in black and white sorted into three stylistic groups: pictorialism (1922-1928); evolution towards modern visual solutions (1930) and the New Vision, from 1930 to 1936, when Arissa is already champion of avant-garde photography. 

In its first stage, which he alternates with working in the family printing, Antoni Arissa (Sant Andreu 1900 - Barcelona 1980) portrays rural scenes, rustic iconography, scenography as a romantic fictions and traditional values.

Nearly the 30´s he took the path of the New Vision, the style adopted throughout Europe by graphic designers, typographers and printers that defend a more modern photography, without fictions or symbolisms and characterized by polished composition, shape and lines and the elegance of the Central Europe photography.

Arissa approaches himself to conceptual photography and begins to take objects and streets, pieces of life that become full significance under photographer's lens.

After the Civil War, the vast majority of platforms that broadcast modernity disappeared and with them much of the work of Arissa and other artists of the time. It was not until the early 90s that the exhibition “Postage vanguards in Spain” regained some of his work, and his figure emerged again from the shadows. Today, Arissa is a symbol of modernity and a reference for publishers, designers and photographers.

 

 

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exhibitions

The CEART opens this Thursday, November 14th in the room A an exhibition dedicated to this master of photography, which will be open to the public until February 9th. The show includes one of the artist's latest projects, focused on the hard work carried out by the miners of Serra Pelada, an open gold mine in the heart of Brazil where employees daily risked their lives.

Immigration, poverty, marginal life, slave labour, man's relationship with the land, the use of natural resources... are issues that have always fascinated Salgado. From the beginning of his career as a photographer, his work has opted to give visibility to the most disadvantaged groups and to create with his images a vivid and impressive visual story without fakes. With a raw black and white, this author's work transits between photo-reportage and naturalistic photography.

And the idea that permeates all his work is human dignity. Salgado portrays employees, miners and gatherers from a purely humanistic approach that wants to value their integrity, their strength and their resilience.

“If you photograph a human, so that he is not represented in a noble way, there is no reason to take the picture. That is my way of seeing things.”

Salgado entered this discipline long after completing his studies in economics between Brazil and the United States, and a doctorate in statistics in France. But in 1973 his life took a turn, and he decided to start his career as a photographer. He achieved to work at the Gamma Agency and Magnum Photos for more than 15 years until in 1994 he founded his own agency “Amazonas Imagen”.

With the “Gold” project, the photographer portrays a harsh reality that takes place in the Serra Pelada mine, a name given to a totally devastated and anarchically excavated mining enclave, the world's largest open-pit gold mine, through which more than 50,000 people have passed. In the heat of the legends about the mysterious “El Dorado”, the enthusiasm for this precious metal led to the development of strenuous exploitation practices for the workers and to originate tales of grief and glory, of human victory and defeat between the soil, the tunnels and the cargo baskets.

The CEART exhibition brings together Salgado's full portfolio in his characteristical black and white and large-format photographs that leave no one indifferent.

 

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