The display
Archivo Paco Gómez. El instante poético y la imagen arquitectónica [Paco Gómez Archive. The poetic moment and architectural image] is composed of about four hundred pieces, including photographs and magazines whose selection is the result of a huge research work carried out by the commissioner, Alberto Martin, in collaboration with
Fundación Foto Colectania that custodies the photographer's archive since 2001. It can be found at
Sala de Exposiciones Canal de Isabel II.
Francisco Gómez (1918-1998), was one of the key names in contemporary photography in the second half of the twentieth century. His wide presence in the photographic scene represented a creative context that the exhibition shows through reviewing the content of his first exhibitions, the reception and appearance of his images in different magazines, as well as his participation in various projects and publications.
His photographs, characterized by a marked formal rigor, symbolism and evocation, an interest in artistic experimentation and a certain existential component in the treatment of the human element, make his work singular in relation to the work of his contemporaries.
Together with his most famous and publicized images, multiple photographs and barely known or unpublished materials can also be seen in the exhibition, generating new reading contexts through their relationship. For
Architecture, the magazine of the Madrid Official Association of Architects, he photographed the streets and neighborhoods of the capital, its urban articulation, its environment and its inhabitants, ornamental or functional details, growth and expansion of the city, and, of course, multiple architectural projects, many of them, designed by the leading architects of the time. Moreover, the pages of this magazine also served as a channel for the creative work of Francisco Gómez, being through them where he conducted his research around abstraction, in an interesting dialogue with the artistic creation of the moment, a collaboration that lead to his dialogue being essentially shaped and disseminated.
The exhibition, together with its complementary catalog, which contains texts by the curator
Alberto Martin; the curator, researcher and artistic director of the Museum University of Navarra
Rafael Levenfeld and the Dr. Architect, curator and photographer
Iñaki Bergera, were conceived as a documentation tool and represent a necessary first step to drill down into the author, his entire work, and in the place it should occupy in the history of Spanish photography.
Within the 'Dirección General de Promoción Cultura'l educational program the
'Encuentros en Canal' (Meetings in Canal) took place once again. Four Wednesdays at 19:00 pm a variety of specialists in the field, welcome the public to dialogue with the photographs of Francisco Gómez. The program was completed with workshops, group visits, guided tours and chat-visits aimed at different audiences; all kinds of activities which participants were offered the opportunity to dig in the work of Francisco Gomez and in the most relevant aspects raised by his work.
