Fototertúlia (Photo talk) The pictorialists from Sabadell , by David González

THE PICTORIALISTS FROM SABADELL. By David González.

Monday, October 5, 2020 at 6:30 p.m.

This online photo talk began with a presentation by Ramon Barnadas on the relationship between coronaviruses and photography: the first image of a coronavirus taken by June Hart in 1964 with an electron microscope, and the reconstruction of the image of the proteins of the coronavirus. crowned by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2007, Joachim Frank.

(Videos and photos by Glòria Puigmal)

 

 

After the presentation by Glòria Puigmal, David González entered the subject.

In the first third of the 20th century, Catalan pictorialist photographers strove to vindicate a space between the Fine Arts through bucolic landscapes, fantastic compositions, popular scenes or portraits that juxtaposed ethnography with a very personal artistic look.

If we focus on the city of Sabadell, the Academy of Fine Arts created a first nucleus of art photographers made up of such prominent authors as Joan Vilatobà i Fígols (1878-1954), Albert Rifà i Planas (1878 -1974) and Miquel Renom i Presseguer (1875-1950) (although he spent most of his career in Barcelona). All of them had in common that they became professional photographers with a gallery of studio portraits and that they combined this facet with participation in photography competitions where they let their creativity fly, winning important prizes.

 

 

 

 

 

Joan Vilatobà. Pictorialistes Sabadellencs

Estudi de Joan Vilatobà. Pictorialistes Sabadellencs

 

In addition to this best-known triumvirate, we must also talk about a second nucleus of amateur photographers closely linked to the world of local hiking who, in a more or less conscious way, also followed the aesthetic postulates of pictorialism. In this second group, which until now has been very little studied, some authors stand out, such as the industrialist Fermí Abad i Ribera (1884-1952), the footballer Pere Monistrol i Masafret (1894-1972), the lamb and photojournalist Francesc Casañas and Riera (1890-1969) or the bromoilist Domènec Llobet i Padró (1885 -?).

David ended the lecture with another relationship between covid-19 and photography, more specifically the pictorialist Joan Vilatobà: the replicas of photographs of Joan Vilatobà made by both him and his family and by Artur Cañigueral during the confinement, in the framework of the activity Fotoinspira’t, and that can be seen in the assembly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW7tLtH3gUU