Paul Strand
June 3–August 23, 2015
Press conference: June 1, 12:30pm
FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE
Bárbara De Braganza Exhibition Hall
Bárbara de Braganza, 13
28004 Madrid
www.fundacionmapfre.org
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From June 3 to August 23 the Bárbara de Braganza exhibition hall of FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE will host the most comprehensive exhibit ever dedicated to the American Paul Strand (New York, 1890–Orgeval, France, 1976), widely acclaimed as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century.
The exhibit takes visitors on a chronological journey through the photographer’s six-decade career (1910s–1960s) and is divided into three broad sections beginning with his early efforts to turn photography into a key, independent medium of artistic expression and ending with his detailed portraits of people and places which often adopted the form of printed books.
The exhibition brings together more than 200 works from major museum and private collections, most notably the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which owns the most comprehensive body of work by Strand. The artist’s first film, Manhatta, made in 1921, will also be screened in the hall.
The exhibit is the latest in a series by FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE dedicated to great masters of photography whose work is still relatively unknown in Spain. On this occasion it has the added interest of turning a spotlight on own collections, because in 2011 FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE acquired more than 50 photographs—most of them vintage prints—by Paul Strand and today is the European institution with the largest and most varied collection of his works.
A strong social motivation and firm political commitment marked Paul Strand’s career, manifested in his constant desire to portray human conflict, and the show offers a profound insight into this aspect which the photographer regarded to be an essential part of his responsibility as an artist.
Born in New York, Strand began his studies of the medium with the social documentary photographer Lewis Hine, at the New York’s Ethical Culture School (1907–09), and subsequently struck up a close friendship with Alfred Stieglitz, another photographer and pioneer in the introduction of modern art in the United States. Strand managed to blend these two powerful influences and examined the possibilities of the camera more fully than any other artist before 1920, exploring photography’s potential to exceed human vision by making intimate, detailed portraits and recording the nuances of machine and natural forms. In the 1930s, during his travels through the Southwest of the United States, Canada and Mexico, he conducted a series of projects on specific communities, analyzing different locales through their people and distinctive cultural elements.
Strand continued to focus on this type of work for the rest of his career, producing images of New England, France, Italy, the Hebrides, Egypt, Morocco, Romania and Ghana that led to the publication of widely distributed books.
The international tour of this exhibit has been organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in association with FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE, and has been made possible thanks to the Terra Foundation for American Art.
