The retrospective dedicated to Paul Strand
KBr is the new Photography Center with which Fundación MAPFRE launches a new stage in his intense dedication to artistic photography, one of his main fields of cultural activity since 2009.
Space, located at number 30 of the Avenida del Litoral in Barcelona, It has an area of 1,400 m2 and has two exhibition halls, an area for educational activities, a bookstore and a multipurpose auditorium.
Two major shows inaugurate KBr Fundación MAPFRE: Bill Brandt and Paul Strand.
Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France, 1916
PHOTOGRAPHY AS A SHARED CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE
KBr is the chemical symbol for potassium bromide, a salt used in the analog photography development process. Its main function is to stop or delay the action of the revealing agent in order to prevent the formation of the so-called “chemical veil”, which allows to obtain a greater purity of whites in the image.
In this evocation of the traditional photographic technique is expressed the continuity of an exhibition program that has paid special attention to the great masters of photography.
Furthermore, the universality of the symbol affirms the dimension of photography as a shared contemporary language and the deep international vocation with which it has been conceived.
“With the opening of the Fundación MAPFRE KBr center we want to maintain our commitment to the city of Barcelona. Our desire is to continue contributing to the cultural life of this rich city by providing it with a new museum space in which to enjoy and discover art”, he states. Nadia Arroyo, director of culture at Fundación MAPFRE.
And she continues: “with KBr we want to go one step further, an almost natural step within the trajectory that Fundación MAPFRE had been acquiring in the world of photography”.
KBr: the new photography center that will revolutionize Barcelona
BUILDING
The KBr Center occupies one of the most representative buildings of contemporary Barcelona: the MAPFRE Tower, in the surroundings of the Olympic Port.
At the foot of this iconic two-story building, on Avenida del Litoral and the promenade the curvilinear forms of the space that houses the rooms of the Kbr are projected.
The Studio m x c Architects has been in charge of the reform and adaptation of the space and the design and conception of the environment that will be generated in the lobby has been carried out by George Vidal.
Cuckmere River, 1963. Private collection, Courtesy Bill Brandt Archive and Edwynn Houk Gallery
THE PROGRAMING
The two exhibition spaces will allow the basic lines of the function's program to continue: great "classics" of photography, consecrated contemporary authors, photographers with widely recognized trajectories.
This is demonstrated by the double proposal with which the center opens its doors: two major exhibitions that can be visited from October 9, 2020 to January 24, 2021.
In the main room will be exhibited the work of Bill Brandt, one of the most important European photographers of the 20th century. In the second room is presented for the first time the Foundation's collection of Paul Strand photographs, the artist's most extensive outside the United States.
The KBr project also contemplates the opening of new itineraries in its programming, such as regular collaboration with other Catalan institutions that pay attention to photography, the projection of the work carried out in schools and other creative fields of young photography and gradually make known the aforementioned photographic collection of the Foundation.
The international projection of all the programming will be a continuous and priority objective of activity, which is already highlighted in its active collaboration with many of the world's leading photographic institutions.
The main room houses the work of photographer Bill Brandt
BILL BRANDT: THE WALKER
The exhibition dedicated to Bill Brandt (Hamburg, 1904-London, 1983), curated by Ramón Esparza, brings together 186 photographs printed by the photographer himself.
This is the first retrospective to be held in Spain on Bill Brandt, in which we will be able to contemplate a selection that testifies to his almost five decades of career throughout which he did not fail to address any of the great genres of the photographic discipline: social reporting, portrait, nude and landscape.
The tour of the work is divided into six sections and tries to show how all these aspects –in which the identity and the concept of "the sinister" become protagonists– come together in the work of this eclectic artist who was considered, above all, a flâneur, a stroller, in terms similar to those of his admired Eugène Atget.
The photographs are complemented by writings, some of his cameras and different documentation, among which stands out an interview that he offered at the end of his life to the British television channel BBC in 1983, as well as illustrated publications of the time.
All thanks to the courtesy of the Bill Brandt Archive in London and the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York. After his visit to Barcelona, the exhibition can be seen at the Kunstfoyer Versicherungskammer Kulturstiftung in Munich, at Fundación MAPFRE's Sala Recoletos in Madrid and at FOAM in Amsterdam.
Bill Brandt: one of the founders of modern photography along with Walker Evans or Cartier-Bresson
PAUL STRAND: DIRECT PHOTOGRAPHY
The Paul Strand (1890-1976) exhibition brings together a significant set (110 photographs) of the fund that the Foundation has within its collections of the American photographer.
The selection forms a representative vision of the work of someone who absorbed the social and documentary approaches of photography at the beginning of the 20th century to end up generating a work that supports some of the foundations of contemporary photography.
The route is divided into four sections that are made up from the artist's way of working, as well as his way of understanding the world.
Paul Srand: a singular trajectory from which some of the foundations of modern photography are based
Since 2008, Fundación MAPFRE has put together a collection of photographs that today has nearly 1,300 works. The collection brings together fundamental names in the development of historical photography such as Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand or Paul Strand himself , along with other contemporary artists such as Fazal Sheikh, Graciela Iturbide or Richard Learoyd and renowned Spanish authors such as Joan Colom, Alberto García-Alix or Cristina García Rodero, among many others.
The opening of the new Fundación MAPFRE KBr Photography Center in Barcelona now offers us the opportunity to show the work of all these artists on a regular basis, through collective or monographic exhibitions such as this first one by Paul Strand.
Both samples are part of the official section of PhotoESPAÑA and can be visited until January 24, 2021.
KBr se KBr becomes a national and international reference in the field of photography
Address: Avenida Litoral, 30 – 08005 Barcelona See map
Schedule: Monday (except holidays): Closed. Tuesday to Sunday (and holidays): 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.