

That's how it was... PHotoESPAÑA Exhibition «Català-Roca. "The lucidity of the look"
The Eagle Room. June 02, 2022 to September 18, 2022
The exhibition «Català-Roca. The lucidity of the gaze »pays tribute to Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, 1922-Barcelona, 1998), on the centenary of his birth, vindicating him as one of the fundamental figures of post-war documentary humanist photography Spanish; the father of the generation that renewed the photographic language and a reference for the later generation.
The exhibition, curated by Oliva María Rubio, includes a selection of 81 images by the author, from the collections of the Photographic Archive of the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya and has been organized by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Community of Madrid in collaboration with PHotoEspaña.
Useful information
Dates:
FINISHED
From June 2 to September 18, 2022
Showroom:
The Eagle
Organization:
General Directorate of Cultural Heritage in collaboration with PHotoEspaña
Curatorship:
Oliva Maria Rubio
The clarity of the gaze
In the different cities of the Spanish geography, Català-Roca portrayed a compendium of our recent history in images: its people, culture, traditions and ways of life, showing the changes that were taking place in the country's economy and architecture, which began to recover little by little from the ravages of the Civil War. His photographs make us witnesses of an era, of a Spain in black and white in which some changes are already noted.
Along with the mythical images of the Gran Vía or the Madrid Metro and the portraits of figures such as Salvador Dalí or Joan Miró, the exhibition brings us closer to other unknown and unpublished images such as some family photographs or those taken in color during his stay in New York in the late XNUMXs. His facet as a portraitist shows us both the poverty of marginal neighborhoods, with images of street vendors, errand boys, shoe shiners or potters, as well as the elegance of the bourgeoisie that attends the Lyceum.
Kodak ©Francesc Català-Roca. Photographic archive of the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya.
©Francesc Català-Roca. Photographic archive of the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya.
Català-Roca's personal style was consolidated in the fifties, after having worked from the age of thirteen in his father's experimental photography laboratory, opening his own at twenty-six. He knew how to combine the technical knowledge acquired during this stage with the photographic trends of the interwar period and put them at the service of a photograph that would account for the reality of the country in which he lived. This resulted in works as outstanding as those he did in Madrid and Barcelona, both books published by the Editorial Destino in 1954.
His multidisciplinary work is not limited to humanistic documentary photography, but also develops an important corpus of photography of architecture, portraits, industrial photography, ceramics and crafts, art, as well as numerous documentaries, among which stand out Barcelona in autumn (1951) Living stones (1952) o Salineros of Ibiza (1954)
Starting in the XNUMXs, he focused his work and research on color photography, which he conceived as a new language and a necessary and natural form, although he never completely abandoned his work in black and white.
Baths of San Sebastian. Barceloneta ©Francesc Català-Roca. Photographic archive of the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya.
Madrid. 1952. ©Francesc Català-Roca. Photographic archive of the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya.
Catalog
The catalogue, co-published by the Community of Madrid and La Fábrica on the centenary of the birth of Francesc Català-Roca, brings together nearly 150 images, some of them unpublished, along with other iconic ones, selected especially for this publication.
It is available for purchase at commercial bookstores.
Price: 35 €
Language: Spanish and English