Exhibitions
Palmira Puig: the poetic gaze of exile
Retrospective at MORERA vindicates his contribution to modern photography and the creative tandem with Marcel Giró.
The MORERA. Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Lleida presents Palmira Puig. Perspectives revealed , a retrospective dedicated to Palmira Puig Ximénez (Tàrrega, 1912 – Barcelona, 1979), one of the most relevant Catalan photographers in exile. The exhibition brings together a careful selection of photographs and documents that cover her entire career, from her beginnings in the thirties to her most mature creations, including images of her husband, the photographer Marcel Giró, and works by other members of the Brazilian modern movement.
Palmira Puig developed her career in Brazil, joining the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) in 1956, an internationally recognized collective that defended photography as an autonomous artistic discipline. In addition to her work as a publicist at Estúdio Giró Puig, together with Marcel Giró, Puig explored a photography with its own language, focused on the human figure and its environment.
Palmira Puig. Desolaçâo, c. 1950, © Marcel Giró Archive – Palmira Puig / Toni Ricart Giró.
Her work falls within what was called “new figurativism”, which emerged in the late 1950s in the Escola Paulista, a group that practiced modern and innovative photography within the FCCB. Palmira Puig's style is characterized by its poetics and humanity —“very contemporary, after all”, according to Rocío Santa Cruz—, always seeking spontaneity and naturalness in the subjects. The people she photographed did not have to pose; the camera captured their essence in a discreet and sincere way.
This exhibition, curated by Jesús Navarro and Rocío Santa Cruz, allows us to rediscover Palmira Puig's contribution to modern photography and to get closer to an artistic vision that continues to inspire contemporary creation. Her photographs have been exhibited and integrated into international collections such as the MoMA in New York, the MASP in São Paulo, the Centre Pompidou in Paris or the Tate Gallery in London, as well as in Catalan collections such as the MNAC and the MORERA. This retrospective allows us to rediscover Palmira Puig's singular vision and her contribution to photographic modernity, as well as her creative complicity with Marcel Giró, with whom she formed an inseparable artistic tandem.
Marcel Giró. Window to the Sky, c. 1950, © Marcel Giró Archive – Palmira Puig / Toni Ricart Giró.
