That combed man who looks through the viewfinder of his Rolleyflex to portray himself with his wife and one of his daughters in an image from 1962 is Gerardo Vielba. The snapshot welcomes the visitor to the exhibition dedicated to it by the Canal Isabel II room in Madrid. He speaks of the constant desire that Vielba (Madrid, 1921-1992) had: "Promote photography, promote photography ...", repeats Antonio Tabernero, curator of the exhibition, who, with 118 black and white images, some thirty of them unpublished , pays tribute to an author little known to the public. A member of the Madrid School, Vielba did not need to make a living from photography. He was an amateur, who, as in a show of Chinese dishes, went from one place to another: critic and theorist in many specialized publications, historian, lecturer, jury of competitions,teacher ... a hyperactivity that, for Tabernero, "undoubtedly took time away from being able to dedicate more to taking his photos."
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PHOTO GALLERY: Gerardo Vielba Exhibition in the Canal Isabel II Room
Chronicler with camera
The curator tells of him that he never spoke of “composition” in the photograph, but rather of “framing” (a masterful example can be seen in
Paseo en el pier at sunset
, 1973, with eight characters in the image), and defines his style as of "great simplicity, with a mixture of surrealism and Castilian hardness".
With the street as the setting for his work, Vielba captured everyday events in which he was able to see details that gave his photos that air of mystery.
Perhaps that is why his images have been chosen to illustrate book covers, as shown in a showcase at the exhibition, which is part of the PHotoEspaña program.
"What photography do I take?", He asked on one occasion: "landscapes, essays on human attitudes in their environment, designs of the sea, children ...". Many of his shots also leave a smile, transmit optimism. His work is part of the collections of the Reina Sofía Museum, the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) and the Alcobendas Collection.
Very fond of reading, an inheritance from his Carlist father, Vielba studied drawing at the School of Arts and Crafts and as a teenager he took his first photos, a period in which he was already a regular at the Prado Museum. Professor at the Military Academy of Aeronautical Studies (in the exhibition there is a sheet in which he had fun drawing his students during an exam), he became close friends, during a destination in Lanzarote, with the artist César Manrique, who introduced him to the vanguards, such as the El Paso group. He made a portrait of Manrique, from 1973, which hangs in the exhibition.
Along with this face of a restless, educated man, in the exhibition, entitled
Gerardo Vielba.
Photographer / 1921-1992
, which can be visited until July 25, also recognizes a person who loved children and their games, the protagonists of many of his images.
This is the case with
Niña de Liérganes
(1968), an unusual picture today, with four girls carrying as many babies in pushchairs.
He also portrayed them alone, as in the snapshot of a girl who wears a heavy banasta on her head, or the one sitting on the seat of a car, or the melancholic gaze of the altar boy in a sacristy of the Castro Urdiales collegiate church. .
'Portrait in Le Tertre', Paris, 1962. / VIELBA FAMILY ARCHIVEerardo Vielba
Always with an old leather wallet on his back, Vielba served as a renovator of prevailing, smug and pictorialist Spanish photography since the fifties, and attacked it from various fronts: in the magazine
Afal
, that Carlos Pérez Siquier and José María Artero had promoted from Almería; at the Royal Photographic Society, in Madrid, which he later presided over for almost 30 years, from 1964 until his death, and at La Palangana, the group of photographers formed in 1957, among others, by Ramón Masats, Gabriel Cualladó, Paco Gómez, Juan Dolcet and Francisco Ontañón. The latter would later say, sarcastically, that La Palangana "was an invention that was used for nothing more than to have a few beers". Vielba joined them in 1963. These and some more formed the Madrid School, of which Tabernero points out that Vielba was its driving force, who influenced with his humanist gaze, with a neorealist aesthetic, so characteristic of the group, in tune with what it was made outside of Spain.
A fact that demonstrates this ancestry of Vielba over his colleagues, explains Tabernero, "is that Cualladó brought him his photos every 15 days so that he could give him his opinion, and left them until his next visit."
"Vielba was not sectarian at all, then and later he supported other photographers, young people who were at times the opposite of his political ideas."
An attitude endorsed by the voices of the documentary that puts an end to the exhibition.
He was not sectarian at all, he always supported other photographers, sometimes young people with opposing political ideas
Antonio Tabernero, curator
This role of factotum transferred him to his numerous collaborations in magazines, such as
Arte Fotográfica
(between 1961 and 1978), an official publication, but which allowed him to publicize his work.
In a display case are the wonderful drawings that he made for the models of number 200 of this magazine.
He also published in
Notebooks of Photography
, where he was a member of its editorial board;
the experimental
New lens, Photo Flash ...
'Girls from Liérganes' (Cantabria), in a photo of Vielba from 1968. / VIELBA FAMILY ARCHIVE
It is clear that Vielba did not like wasting time, as evidenced by his six-day stay in Paris, for work, in 1962. He was able to take time to take photos of his visit to the Louvre, to capture the poetic portrait of a seated man on a terrace in Le Tertre, or the image of the Café de la Paix in which a seated man is seen, dressed as a wizard king, unpublished snapshots. From that year they are also the ones he did when he attended a baptism, but, in an example of his character, he dedicated himself to photographing a group of gypsies who were at a previous celebration and who ended up posing drinking wine and smeared with meringue. He was a photographer who was guided by his instincts, as he himself summed up: "I have a special taste in what beats in me, it makes me fall in love and invites me to leave it in a still image".