The aim of this exhibition is to recover the visual memory of one of the major Catalan twentieth century photographers, Pere Català i Pic. The exhibition, curated by Pablo Giori, was originally created as part of a project on the photographer which was launched in 2013 to publicise the recovery of his archives, followed by the 2016 publication of his biography Pere Català i Pic: fotografia, publicitat, avantguarda i literatura, 1889-1971 by Rafael Dalmau, Editor.
Pere Català i Pic’s trajectory allows us to explain the everyday work of a photographer while providing a first-hand account of the history of Catalonia from the perspective of an intellectual and self-made man. Although Català i Pic is known particularly as a photographer and as the author of the famous “Crush fascism” poster, he also worked in a bank, was an apprentice, painter and portrait artist, Catalan political activist, advertising photographer, writer and teacher of the Seminari de Publicitat, creator of the Comissariat de Propaganda and chief editor, unpublished literary specialist, industrial and artistic photographer, lover of calçots, of Sardinia and its Catalan dialect Algherese, tireless traveller, and above all, loyal to his friends.
The exhibition features 35 reproductions of the photographer’s work and 14 original works from his archive, numerous personal objects belonging to Pere Català i Pic (a camera, personal diaries, negatives and formulae for developing, and fragments of diary from the time), as well as an audiovisual documentary featuring researchers specialising in his life and work.
The exhibition is divided into three periods (1915-1932: Portrait artist needed; 1932-1939: The Republic and the War, and 1939-1971: Post-war, industrialization, literature), and includes a themed section on the relationship between technology and modernity.
