Travelling exhibitions

31.MAY.2023 – 10.SEP.2023

Museo ICO, Madrid

Dialectics. Tales of memory. Landscape.

Without a doubt, María Bleda (Castellón, 1969) and José María Rosa (Albacete, 1970) are one of the most unique artistic duos on the contemporary Spanish photographic scene. For three decades they have been exploring together, through rigorous and profound visual research, the dialectic between landscape and territory, between history and memory, between image and text.

Winners of the 2008 National Photography Prize, Bleda and Rosa have developed a language of their own, between the visual and the textual, as a means of reflecting on the different meanings and evocations that the human gaze conjures in contemplation of the landscape, as reflected in the series Campos de fútbol [Footbal pitches], Campos de batalla [Battlefields], Origen [Origin] and Prontuario [Compendium]. For the first time ever, this exhibition brings together their entire body of work, presented in a video installation where projections invite us to experience their art with other contemplative rhythms.

23.APR.2023 – 06.AUG.2023

Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA.

Personal. Portraiture. Existencial.

Through her lens, the American photographer Judith Joy Ross explores the emotional world of those around her, seeking to answer existential questions. Influenced by Lewis Hine, August Sander and Diane Arbus, the photographer has become one of the most influential artists in the portrait genre, demonstrating that she is capable of capturing the present, past and future of the individuals who happen across her camera.

In the 1980s, after several trips to Europe, Ross acquired an 8 x 10 inch camera so that she could take portraits of “ordinary people” in public places, usually working class individuals, like herself, with whom she establishes a unique relationship. Through her photographs she does not seek to glorify or judge the subjects she portrays, simply to portray their most human side.

18.MAR.2023 – 11.JUN.2023

Huis Marseille, Amsterdam

The edge of society. Culture shock. Color.

Carlos Pérez Siquier (1930-2021), a leading figure in the forging of photographic modernism and the professionalizing of this medium in Spain, enjoyed a prominent place on the Spanish scene, firstly for his neorealism work and later as a pioneer of color photography. This artistic endeavor earned him the National Photography Award in 2003.

His photographic series deal with the edge of society, the visual alterations triggered in the environment by the Franco-era developmentalism, and the cultural shock produced by the enormous influx of foreign tourists in Spain, up to his retreat, in the latter stages of his life, to more personal spheres. As a retrospective, this exhibition covers his most iconic series, produced between 1957 and 2018, with an important number of previously unpublished images and documentary contributions that enrich his discourse.

13.FEB.2023 – 23.APR.2023

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

Straight photography. Abstraction. Documentary.

Born in New York, Paul Strand (1890-1976) was a man ahead of his time, fusing socially committed photography with more modern trends that explored naturalness, laying the foundations of what would later be known as “straight photography”. This artistic process stemmed from his knowledge of contemporary art derived from his relationship with artists and theorists, such as Alfred Stieglitz, together with his intuition and his capacity for synthesis.

The exhibition features a wide selection (110 images) of Strand’s photographs from Fundación MAPFRE’s collection, focusing on the different themes explored by the artist: geometries, landscapes, portraits and countries. Therefore, it does not only include his landscapes and urban scenes, marked both by a search for abstraction and a documentary approach, but also a number of anonymous faces portrayed with great naturalness, offering us an intimate perspective.

26.NOV.2022 – 26.MAR.2023

Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague

Personal impulse. Portraiture. Searching for answers.

It took American photographer Judith Joy Ross some time to realise that photography helped her to make the world in which she lived more comprehensible. From that moment on, she has continued to use the medium to try to answer existential questions.

Since the 1980s, Judith Joy Ross has focused her work primarily on the genre of portraiture. Her images have the ability to unite the past, present and future of the individuals who pose in front of her camera. She is not a studio portraitist, nor does she go out into the street to capture a particular subject; instead, she works according to themes, which she calls “occasions”, and in each shot she takes, a kind of recognition is established between herself and the subject, even if this understanding lasts just for an instant, the time it takes to snap the photo.

20.OCT.2022 – 29.JAN.2023

Antiguo Instituto Jovellanos, Gijón

Documentalist. Social. Ironic.

Lee Friedlander has been a photographer almost since he was a teenager and throughout his long career he has produced a wide range of work. His images primarily record what he himself called, in the 1960s, the “American social landscape”.

This exhibition reveals a very prolific, curious artist who is also passionate about music and books, and who is still active today. His work brings together portraits, self-portraits, family photographs, shots of nature or cityscapes, often in series, which he assembles by thematic and stylistic associations developed over a number of years.

19.OCT.2022 – 12.MAR.2023

Museo de la Universidad de Navarra

Documentalist. Illusionist. Critic.

Jorge Ribalta is a curator, art critic and photographer, activities that he has been combining since the beginning of his career in the 1980s. In 2005, his work underwent a radical change that divided it into two opposing periods, at least in terms of basic concepts. During the first of these, his work focused on poetically exploring the constructed naturalism of photography, while in the second he redirected his projects towards reinventing the documentary.

Ribalta’s images ‒shot mainly in black and white using analog film‒ are the fruit of rigorous and nuanced observation. Through his work, the artist takes a journey through the changing landscapes of the late capitalism of our time.

This exhibition shows the passage from illusionist staged photography, which began in 1987, to his arrival at documentary photography, which he continues to pursue today.

This exhibition is being co-produced by Fundación MAPFRE and the Museo Universidad de Navarra.

14.OCT.2022 – 15.JAN.2023

FFF Frankfurt, Germany

A sense of humor. Black and white. Color.

One of the most outstanding characteristics of the work of Pérez Siquier, a seminal figure in Spanish photography, is that, from the beginning of his career in the 1950s, he maintained his status as a peripheral artist, since he lived all his life in his native Almería. From there, over a period of more than sixty years, Pérez Siquier created a photographic corpus that penetrates, tangentially but also in a deep and incisive way, into the debates of that time. His series are populated by the periphery of society, the visual alterations arising out of Franco-era developmentalism, the cultural shock produced by the massive influx of foreign tourists to Spain, and the penetrative gaze of a different way of seeing things.

This exhibition, which aims to boost the international recognition of a figure who won the Spanish National Photography Prize in 2003, covers his most important series. The Pérez Siquier exhibition is FFF’s contribution to Spain, their Guest of Honor at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair and it is being co-organized by Fundación MAPFRE and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) in collaboration with FFF.

17.MAY.2022 – 25.SEP.2022

DA2 Salamanca

Everyday life. Critique. Social landscape.

Lee Friedlander is one of the most influential photographers of our time. Reconstructing his heterogeneous work means immersing ourselves in a world laden with everyday, recognizable elements that, on closer inspection, take on a different, more complete meaning.

Considered one of the key artists of the twentieth century, and after more than sixty years of taking photographs on a daily basis, he continues to renovate his language. In this search for visual metaphors that are difficult to understand, despite their apparent ordinariness, his critical gaze reflects, albeit with strictly formal intent, the enormity and chaos of American society.

The exhibition offers a journey through his extensive body of work, a portfolio that is almost always grouped in series, sets of photographs developed over several years. The works on display include photographs belonging to the Fundación MAPFRE Collections.