Gasparini: to see you better, Latin America
Spectacular display at the opening of the gigantic and multi-localised PhotoEspaña exhibition. The Mapfre Foundation's galleries have been among the earliest openers, with two exhibitions, which between 1 June and 28 August, will show the particular vision of Paolo Gasparini on Latin America and Carlos Pérez Siquier on the transition from backward Spain to developmentalism.
Paolo Gasparini (Gorizia, Italy, 1934) expresses his satisfaction to Atalayar for an exhibition that is the first to offer a complete overview of the artist's career, focusing both on his photographs and on another of his main means of expression, the photobook, a crucial narrative mechanism for defining the history of photography on the Ibero-American continent. Six decades of career that together offer an itinerary through various mutant cities: Caracas, Havana, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, but also with resonances of Munich, Paris or London.
More than 300 works make up this exhibition, generically entitled Field of Images, with particular emphasis on the trips Gasparini made around Latin America in the early 1970s with the historian Damián Bayón. As he himself tells us, "coinciding with the revolts of the 1960s in Cuba, and echoing the nationalism and populism that plagued the continent, I felt the moral imperative not only to reflect the events that were taking place, but also to position myself in the discourse of left-wing intellectuals, who at that time advocated an art of a social nature that would do justice".
Over the years, this commitment has not disappeared, but he recognises that it has been transformed and has become a less radicalised position that aims to do justice from all points of view, denouncing any kind of extremism. Gasparini thus acknowledges the enormous disenchantment he has felt with a Cuba in which "he had placed all his hopes", and implies that he feels the same disillusionment with the countries and regimes that have copied the model of the Cuban dictatorship.
Curated by the Colombian María Wills Londoño, she points out that Gasparini is the photographer who has best portrayed the tensions and contradictions of the South American continent. His images convey the harsh social reality faced by a region whose cultural authenticity is unquestionable, and where past and local tradition dialogue with a clumsy imposed modernity. His works allow us to understand not only the differences between Europe and the Latin American continent, but also the diversities offered by the latter, from Mexico to the southern Andes. "Gasparini's photographs reflect on the effects of decades of political migration in the 20th and 21st centuries: from Europeans to America as a result of the Second World War, from Cubans to Spain and the United States, from Ecuadorians to Spain and, more recently, the mass exodus of Venezuelans to Colombia. Generations and generations marked by voluntary and forced exile can only make us think about the ambivalence of identity".
One of the most outstanding characteristics of Carlos Pérez Siquier (Almería, 1930-2021) is his status as a peripheral artist, since he lived all his life in his native Almería. Without ever having moved to the major centres of production in Spain, such as Madrid or Barcelona, Pérez Siquier became a fundamental figure in Spanish photography.
From his vantage point in Almería, over a period of more than sixty years, he created a photographic corpus that delves deeply and scathingly into the debates of the time. Through his series run the social periphery, the visual alterations arising from Franco's developmentalism, or the cultural shock produced by the massive arrival of foreign tourism in Spain and the penetration of a different way of looking.
This new visual, colourful and sensual culture, condensed behind the slogan "Spain is different", came to superficially replace the post-war trauma on the country's coasts. In addition, the exhibition, all of them from the Mapfre Foundation Collection, also presents the author's withdrawal into more personal spheres in his final years. As the curators Carlos Gollonet and Carlos Martín state, "it is in the shift from the element of social criticism towards the sceptical and curious celebration of a consumer society that can be perceived in his work, where the real change of paradigm in post-war European society is reflected. It is also this interest that connects his work with the most critical pop art proposals, with the auteur cinema of the 1960s and with the literature of his generation". The exhibition, in short, brings the public closer to an artist who was fundamental in the creation of photographic modernity and the professionalisation of the medium in Spain. Initially, from postulates close to neorealism and, later, as a pioneer of colour photography.