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Marianne Breslauer

Photographies 1927 - 1938

By Alexandra Laudo [Heroínas de la Cultura] 29.12.16

MNAC presents the first solo exhibition in Spain of the work of Marianne Breslauer, a German photographer of Jewish origin whose career was cut short with the arrival to power of the Nazi party resulting in her exile and emigration. During a brief artistic trajectory that lasted just eleven years Breslauer produced a body of photographic work with its own personality, that nowadays forms part of distinguished photography collections resulting in its being considered one of the main exponents of "New Photography".

  • Marianne Breslauer

    Marianne Breslauer, Photographer (selfportrait), Berlin, 1933 © Marianne Breslauer / Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur

     

    The exhibition focuses on a photographic series that Breslauer produced during a road trip through Catalonia, Andorra, the Basque Country and Navarre during 1933, accompanied by the journalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach, who in addition to driving had to write a text that would accompany Breslauer's photographs for a German agency.

  • Marianne Breslauer

    Marianne Breslauer, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Berlin,1932 © Marianne Breslauer / Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur

  • Marianne Breslauer

    Marianne Breslauer, untittled (Annemarie Schwarzenbach with her car and a shepard), Pirineos,1933 Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek, NB, Bern

     

    Breslauer's snapshots deliberately distance themselves from the "New Objectivity" in order to more closely be aligned with the so-called stream of "Poetic Realism". They are more emotional and pay closer attention to both the everyday and that which challenges the ordinary from simplicity and the poetic. The photographs of this exhibition, many of them previously unpublished, provide a snapshot of the landscapes and people that Breslauer encountered during her travels in the Spanish Republic, but also includes photographs taken in cities such as Paris and Berlin, and portraits of her companion and other artists who she was close to, like Picasso, Paul Citroen and Man Ray, who she worked for as an assistant.

     

     


  • Marianne Breslauer

    Marianne Breslauer, Défense d'afficher, Paris,1937 © Marianne Breslauer / Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur

  • Marianne Breslauer

    Marianne Breslauer, Paris,1929 © Marianne Breslauer / Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur

  • Marianne Breslauer

    Marianne Breslauer, Lützowufer Bridge, Berlin,1930 © Marianne Breslauer / Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur

  • From 27 October to 29 January
  • MNAC. Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya
  • Parc de Montjuïc, s/n, 08038 Barcelona
  • www.museunacional.cat