About the portfolio of photographs :
10 photographs of the Foto Colectania’s main collection and 5 photographs by Paco Gómez, in memoriam :
The work of Paco Gómez (Pamplona, 1918 – Madrid 1998) is among the most personal and consistent in Spain. He belonged to the generation of photographers who claimed a new subjective and poetic vision of photography in the late fifties. In 1956 he joined the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid, initial germ of what was called the School of Madrid, and was the founder of La Palangana group, which included photographers such as Gabriel Cualladó, Gerardo Vielva and Ramón Masats. Despite being closely linked to other photographers of his time, Paco Gómez maintained an innovative and personal look about the photographed object, which today is entirely valid. Ramon Masats said “he was, in my opinion, the best photographer of my generation. Neither more nor less.”
About Foto Colectania’s organisation
Foto Colectania is a private, non-profit organisation founded in 2001, aiming at promoting Spanish and Portuguese Photography from the 1950s until today with its main collection and encouraging photography collecting, for the vital importance it has towards the development of art practice. Since the Foundation’s birth, we have organised a variety of exhibitions, publications, together with round table discussions and other activities within the same goals. Foto Colectania is one of the few foundations in Europe devoted to familiarising the public with how and why to collect photography.
Foto Colectania’s main collection of Spanish and Portuguese photography since the 1950’s is steadily growing, by means of both purchases and donations, or the temporary deposit of several private collections. Their 3.000 photographs have been digitalized for the database, which is accessible on their premises. A significant part of the Colectania collection can be visited in our website: www.colectania.es.
Extensive series of different times by artists such as Gabriel Cualladó, Xavier Miserachs, Alberto García-Alix and Humberto Rivas, among others, or emblematic series by Chema Madoz, Joan Colom, Joan Fontcuberta and Javier Vallhonrat are represented in Foto Colectania’s collection. Among the artists are also Portuguese illustrious names of Modern and Contemproary Photography, such as Jorge Molder, Helena Almeida, Antonio Julio Duarte, Jorge Guerra, Fernando Lemos, Gérald Castello Lopes, Sena da Silva and Inês Gonçalves.
The Foundation’s collection also includes a deposit of Juan Redon’s Collection as well as the archive of Spanish photographer Paco Gómez, which was donated to the Foundation by his heirs in 2001 with the commitment to safeguard it in the best conditions, cataloguing and promoting it. Since then, the more than 24,000 negatives and about 1,000 prints by Gómez are located in the Foundation who is the exclusive holder of the copyright of Paco Gómez’s work. The Foundation is currently conducting a comprehensive cataloguing of the archive with the aim of spreading the photographer’s legacy, which is already available in the website http://www.colectania.es/index.php?i=1&p=3&s=4.
The intention of the foundation is to develop an extensive amount of artistic photographs, which will allow tracing the evolution of the photographic medium in the two countries; hence they are especially interested in acquiring series of different authors in their whole.
As to guarantee perfect preservation conditions, the prints are stored in a special conservation vault at stable temperature and humidity levels and restricted access.
The Colectania Collection is available to organisations and public institutions that might be interested in exhibiting it.
Part of their collection has been shown in different exhibitions outside our premises, by means of loans and collaborations with other institutions. Foto Colectania also produces exhibitions that tour nationally and internationally, after being exhibited in its hall.
Fundació Foto Colectania’s venue covers a surface of 300 m2 in charming Gracia neighbourhood, divided into two levels and a terrace. The foundation’s infrastructure includes an exhibition space, a conservation vault and a library specialised in Photography. Their exhibition hall, the first space in Barcelona dedicated to Photography exhibitions, house shows of public and private collections, retrospective exhibitions of great masters of Photography or self-produced, curated shows of contemporary photography projects. In the same hall, a vast activities programme has been developed, including lectures, presentations or screenings on a monthly basis. The library is specialised in Spanish and Portuguese Photography and in collecting fom the beginning of the 1900. It includes more than 2.000 books, some of them very rare, other recent editions, magazines or catalogues that can be consulted through a database in the same space.
In 2006 Fundació Foto Colectania was awarded the ARCO’s Prize to the best National Initiative of Private Collecting. The Foundation has also received the Prize for the “Best Exhibition Programme 2007” from The Catalan Association of Art Critics (ACCA). Just a year ago, in 2012, they received the Bartolomé Ros Prize awarded by the PhotoEspaña Festival in Madrid.
Its exhibition programme focuses on the presentation of public and private photography collections, solo shows of great Masters of Photography or curated contemporary photography projects. Alongside our catalogue editions, our exhibition and lectures programme aims to familiarize the public on Photography and the different insights when collecting it.
Among the past exhibitions over the past two years, you can find:
Garry Winogrand. Women are beautiful
24th June – 4th of June 2011
Garry Winogrand is considered one of the greatest innovators of photography of the twentieth-century in America. The Foundation Foto Colectania presents its series Women Are Beautiful, including 85 photographs taken between 1960 and 1975 and collected in the book with the same title by the legendary director of photography at the MoMA, John Szarkowski. The exhibition from the collection of Lola Garrido, is part of the programming line of the foundation which is dedicated to authors who changed the course of the history of photography.
Joan Colom. Album
June 23rd to October 29th, 2011
Joan Colom is considered one of the most important photographers of the 50s and 60s and one of the greatest documentalists of everyday life in Barcelona. With this exhibition, Foto Colectania aims to pay homage to Joan Colom, to his understanding of photography both as a visual document and as an expressive language.
Indirect Speech. Curator: Martí Perán
11th November 2011 – 28th January 2012
Indirect speech is the style of narration in which the speaker appropriates the character’s voice to edit it as a clause subordinated to his/her own position. With this sort of gesture, contemporary culture tries to overcome a very specific deficiency: the urgency for a future. By the use of collage to reassemble fragments of materials, narratives and geographies, the photographic medium has become an effective tool to test this impatient, political (re)construction of new horizons. The exhibition Indirect Speech brings together different works settled in a tension between memory and prediction. Participating artist: Adrià Julià, David Maljkovic, Chris Mottalini, Javier Peñafiel, Peter Piller, Eve Sussman, Thomas Steinert, Jordi Colomer.
The Dwelling Life Of Man. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Collection
22nd February – 16th June 2012
Foto Colectania together with the Suñol Foundation in Barcelona simultaneously presented the exhibition The Dwelling Life of Man. Photographs from the Martin Z. Margulies Collection, curated by French curator Régis Durand. The exhibition included more than 165 photographs and videos by 50 artists.
In three different parts, the first two shown in Foto Colectania and the third in the Suñol Foundation, the exhibition explored the way man lives in the world, appropriates it, changes it and finally leaves his/her mark on the reality of emotions, life, work or nature. It included some of the most important names in international photography, such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Lee Friedlander, Ed Ruscha, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Helen Levitt, Andreas Gursky or Roni Horn.
Consistently named to lists such as the ARTnews 200 The World’s Top Collectors, and the top 25 photography collectors in the world, the Margulies Collection is considered by curators, critics, artists and dealers as one of the most important collections of its kind. Focusing on seminal works by important artists, the collection includes European Modernism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual, Arte Povera, Video, Vintage and Contemporary Photography. Mr. Margulies is deeply involved in the nation’s visual arts community.
Chorus. Videoart from the Martin Z. Margulies Collection
26th June – 28th July 2012
After the photography exhibition of the Margulies collection and given the public’s response to it, we decided to show a small exhibition of videos included in the collection. It included works by the artists Marina Abramovic, Doug Aitken, Peter Friedl, Jacco Olivier, Kota Ezawa, Fischli & Weiss.
Leopoldo Pomés. Barcelona 1957
18th September 2012 – 26 January 2013
The Foto Colectania Foundation presented the exhibition “Barcelona 1957. Leopoldo Pomés”, a show that recovered the photographic project about the city of Barcelona that the publisher Carlos Barral commissioned to a young Pomés in 1957 but which, despite its quality and intensity, has not surfaced until now. Far from portraying a showcase city, Pomés suggested a tour through the very essence of Barcelona in the late fifties offering his view over the city as a whole.
The exhibition was accompanied by a book co-edited by Colectania and La Fábrica, including texts by photography expert Juan Manuel Bonet, Leopoldo Pomés and writer Eduardo Mendoza.
Artwork as Collection. Curator: Joan Fontcuberta
20th February – 25th May 2013
The exhibition curated by Joan Fontcuberta, has been a self-produced project presented at the Foto Colectania Foundation for the first time. It aimed to confirm a current growing situation: the shift from the collection of artworks to the artwork as collection. Through the work of 10 artists, Ève Cadieux, Emilio Chapela Perez, Hans Eijkelboom, Erik Kessels, Martin Parr, Jean-Gabriel Périot, Joachim Schmid, Richard Simpkin, Eric Tabuchi and Penelope Umbrico, this exhibition provided an analysis on contemporary photography, one of Colectania’s main exhibition lines. The exhibition coincided with the show “From here on. Post-Photography in the age of Internet and Mobile Phones”, presented at Arts Santa Monica Centre in Barcelona and curated by Joan Fontcuberta, Joachim Schmid, Martin Parr and Erik Kessels.
Fundació Foto Colectania
Julián Romea, 6, Bajos
08006 Barcelona
Spain
Tel: +34.93.217.16.26
Fax: +37.93.218.73.11
[email protected]
