Xavier Miserachs Photographs from the collection Foto Colectania

Past event

The Cerezales Antonino y Cinia Foundation, located in Cerezales del Condado, opens on 16 June 2013, at 1 p.m., an exhibition of works by the Catalan photographer Xavier Miserachs.

Thanks to the funds of the Foto Colectania Foundation, the exhibition includes 50 photographs and dedicates a room to some of his contact sheets from the MACBA_ Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, thus highlighting the importance of the archive in the creative process of an artist.

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona 1937-1998) was the most precocious photographer of the Catalan New Avant-Garde movement of the 1960s. The photographs selected for this exhibition are a representation of his most iconic work: his books Barcelona, black and white (1964), which was a milestone in the history of Spanish photobooks, and Costa Brava show (1966). Also on display are several contact sheets and a dozen or so vintage prints.

About the author

Xavier Miserachs was one of the main actors in the renewal movement of Spanish photography that managed to bring out of ostracism a medium that until then had remained disconnected from international trends and reluctant to be creative.

At the age of 17 he won the Luís Navarro prize and became a professional in 1961. He worked in book illustration, advertising and collaborated assiduously with various magazines such as La Actualidad Española and Triunfo. He travelled all over the world doing reports for the publications Gaceta Ilustrada, Interviú and Bazaar, among others.

In the 1960s a series of artistic groups such as El Paso and Parpalló coincided in our country and were the forerunners of the associative movement in the field of photography; the prodigious triangle was structured around the AFAL Group of Almería on the one hand, the Madrid School on the other, and the Catalan New Avant-Garde. The Barcelona group had leaders such as Francesc Català-Roca, Oriol Maspons and the critic Josep María Casademont, and other great photographers such as Ramón Masats, Ricard Terré, Julio Ubiña, Leopoldo Pomés and Joan Colom, among others.

Miserachs, despite his youth, joined this characteristic associative movement from the outset and participated enthusiastically in the most important group exhibitions.

The photographic influences he himself acknowledged were those of Francesc Català-Roca - a major figure very close to the photographer - and later of William Klein, whose innovative contrasts and framing, as well as the groundbreaking layout of his books, were a revelation for the young Miserachs. The harshness of the photographer's gaze and technical approach is often softened in his portraits, which reveal the weight of the humanist influence on his photography.

About the exhibition

From 1961 and throughout much of that decade, Miserachs focused on two places he knew very well: the city of Barcelona and the Costa Brava, to which we dedicate this exhibition and from which he published two books that are key to understanding that period.

In Barcelona, blanc i negre (Aymà, 1964), he travels through the city, reflecting its transformation, with images of the gypsies of Montjuïc, the streets of the Raval, the affluent area of the centre and the new neighbourhoods that welcomed emigrants, with great narrative skill, showing us a global view of the whole city. Miserachs achieved an exceptional balance in this book by combining the perspectives of both artist and chronicler.

Pere Formiguera in his Introduction to the history of Catalan photography considers it “possibly the best photographic artist's book of the time”, and adds: “it can be said that the publisher made a strong commitment to an eminently photographic book, which broke all the moulds of the publishing production of the time to place itself squarely in the author's book, along the lines of William Klein's New York, Rome or Tokyo... Far from seeking a monumental, propagandistic and touristic aspect of the city, Miserachs offered us the authentic everyday image of Barcelona, harsh and tender at the same time.”

Costa Brava Show (Kirós, 1966) was another publication that once again represented a risky gamble on the part of the photographer and has also been highly valued by fans and experts in photobooks. Miserachs's gaze in this series oscillates between irony and less aggressive humour, recreating the spectacle of the tourism that was beginning to invade our country.

In 2011, the Cerezales Antonino y Cinia Foundation started a research project with Chus Domínguez called Territorio Archivo, which seeks to reflect the identity of a territory and to work for the conservation of the multiple photographic archives of the residents of several rural localities.

In this context, the exhibition of works by Xavier Miserachs also aims to give the importance it deserves to the existence and management of a photographer's archive as part of his creative process, including six contact sheets and a dozen vintage prints.

Miserachs himself had the opportunity in the last years of his life to review his archive, both in the sphere of his creative and professional work, and he set down his reflections on this subject in his books and essays on photography. In 1992 he commented:

“At this stage of my career, researching in my archive is a very enriching experience because it forces you to review your work and your biography, and you realise that one and the other coincide (...) Reviewing my archive has been a vital experience because it has forced me to a profound exercise of self-knowledge”.”

Xavier Miserachs' archive was deposited in 2011 at the Centre d'Estudis i Documentació del Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), which catalogues, researches and manages his rights. Miserachs' daughters donated to this centre for 25 years the prints, contact sheets (some of which can be seen in this exhibition) and slides from his entire professional career.

Sobe Foto Colectania

The Foto Colectania Foundation is a non-profit organisation that was inaugurated in Barcelona in 2002 with the aim of disseminating photography and collecting through exhibitions, activities (colloquiums, seminars, trips) and the publication of catalogues.

Foto Colectania has a photography collection that brings together 3,000 works by Spanish and Portuguese photographers from 1950 to the present day.

In 2001 it received the total donation of the archive of Paco Gómez, photographer of the School of Madrid. It consists of 24,000 negatives, more than 1,000 original copies of a legacy dedicated to his creative work and to the commissions of the magazine Arquitectura, from the Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid during a period of 15 years (1959 - 1974).

The Foto Colectania Foundation has always sought the alliance and complicity of different entities and institutions, both public and private, to carry out its activities.

An important part of this is its programme of travelling exhibitions, which aims to share and disseminate the Foto Colectania collection, both nationally and internationally. This exhibition, organised jointly with the Cerezales Antonino y Cinia Foundation, responds to this spirit of collaboration and dissemination of the foundation.

Xavier Miserachs_ Photographs from the collection Foto Colectania
From 16 June to 29 September 2013
Visiting hours: Tuesday to Sunday from 12 to 14 and from 18 to 21 hours
Free admission
Guided tours of the exhibition for groups: Guided tours for groups will be arranged upon request.