December 19, 2024–April 27, 2025
This exhibition, dedicated to Gabriel Cualladó (Massanassa, Valencia, 1925–Madrid, 2003), is based on an exhaustive research of the works of this author present in the IVAM Collection (around 445 photographs) as one of the fundamental pillars of the museum’s collection. The show, curated by Sandra Moros, is a selection of projects and reports that Cualladó produced from the late 1950s to the 1990s, to which a part of the photographer’s archive and library is added for the first time.
Cualladó: Archive/Work aims to look at Cualladó’s universe starting at its origins, making visible his work as a photographer, but also as a collector, writer and editor. His archive (made up of photomontages, correspondence, polaroids, brochures, invitations and many other documents) and his fantastic library, unique in Spain, allow us to construct not only his work but also the history and development of photography in Spain, including in the international context. His material and artistic legacy makes it possible to trace Cualladó’s career from amateur associationism to the official recognition of photography as an artistic genre, for which he was awarded the first National Photography Prize in 1994.
The exhibit includes documents and previously unpublished material that reveal a different side of the artist, and also presents part of his extensive photography collection, housed at the IVAM, which includes artists such as Diane Arbus, August Sander and Dorothea Lange. Created by him intuitively through acquisitions and exchanges with other photographers, by incorporating his collection in this exhibition we enable a dialogue between his work and works by different photographers, while generating a story of artists, elements, images, and common and multifaceted visual resources that run throughout his practice as an artist and collector.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive book published by IVAM that includes texts by the curator as well as contributions from professionals such as Jorge Ribalta, National Photography Award 2024.
