Date: 15th of March 2013 - 21st of July 2013
Curator: Javier Ortiz Echagüe
Organised by the Museu Nacional d’Art Catalunya and the Museo Universidad de Navarra
José Ortiz Echagüe (1886- 1980) travelled to Rif for the first time in 1909 where he realised aerial images as a member of the photography service of the Spanish Army. But even from these heights Ortiz remained down to earth. Concurrently, he began to portray local realities; capturing the life, landscapes and customs of the region. Somewhere between documentation and anthropology, his work embraces the emotion of Pictorialism, but without the allegory or literary evocation usually associated with this movement. His photographs of Fez and Tetuan are a good example of this.
However, on returning to Morocco in the 1960s, Ortiz Echagüe was confronted with a different reality: the modernisation of the country. The African typologies that he had captured before, those of such picturesque and ideal exoticism - had now disappeared. Ortiz interpreted this transformation by capturing rarefied environments, persons out of context and solitary landscapes with backdrops of surreal clouds. The result was nostalgia for a vanishing world. In this vein, Sirocco in the Sahara (1965) is his last great achievement. As if at a junction in his work, the experimentation of texture and composition takes precedence over documentation.
Now, the Museu Nacional d’Art Catalunya, in collaboration with the Museo Universidad de Navarra, presents the most spontaneous and creative moment of Ortiz Echagüe’s photography: the initial nucleus of his activity, where we encounter one of the most creative periods in the history of photography. Nevertheless, the exhibition not only focuses on the canon of the photographer, but also lesser known stages of his work: his military photographs captured from aboard the army’s hot air balloons. Ultimately, the total of seventy-nine photographs, together with essential documents, facilitates an understanding of this junction in the work of Ortiz Echagüe during his time in North Africa.
Free guided tours: Saturdays at 4 pm in Spanish and at 5 pm in Catalan
Exhibition Catalogue
Date: 19th of April 2013 - 15th of September 2013
Marià Fortuny. The Battle of Tetouan. Roma, 1863-1865. Oil on canvas. 300 x 972 cm
Curators: Francesc Quílez and Jordi A. Carbonell
The immense canvas ‘The Battle of Tetouan’ (1863 – 1865), realised by Marià Fortuny, has become an icon of our cultural imagination.
On occasion of the 175th anniversary of the artist’s birth, the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya joins the acts of commemoration with an exhibition providing the viewer with a range of perspectives in understanding the richness and complexity of this great composition. More than 130 pieces occupy the space where Fortuny’s great work has been displayed since 2004.
The first section of the exhibition highlights the preparatory drawings of the work, drawings belonging to the collection of the Museu Nacional and the Institut Municipal de Museus de Reus. A further space has been dedicated to ‘The Battle of Wad-Ras’, also by Fortuny, complimented by a watercolour study of Tetouan by the painter and a selection of photographs by Enrique Facio. The second part of the exhibition presents a graphic chronicle of the history of the painting: the processes of intervention, translations and changes of location, etc.
A further section is dedicated to Salvador Dalí, author of a version of the Battle of Tetouan which was exhibited alongside the homonymous work by Fortuny in the Saló del Tinell in the year 1962. A series of photographs of Dalí’s work and some of his preparatory drawings recall this event. In addition, the exhibition features major loans from important public and private collections, like those of the Real Biblioteca de Madrid, the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, the Museo Nacional del Prado or the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí of Figueres.
Activities centring on the exhibition
Press file (pdf)
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