Masks Schommer
Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid 7/21/2014 - 9/14/2014
Masks is the title of an extensive series of photographic portraits created in the 1980s by Alberto Schommer. Depicting modern-day Spanish intellectuals, the series constitutes one of the most original and moving iconographical galleries of the twentieth century.
Its roll-call of sitters includes writers of various generations (Francisco Ayala, Vicente Aleixandre, Rafael Alberti, Camilo José Cela, Gabriel Celaya and Juan Benet), philosophers and historians (José Luis Aranguren and Julio Caro Baroja) and key figures from the world of the visual arts, film and music (Antonio Saura, Eduardo Chillida, Juana Mordó, Julio López, José Hernández and Antonio López).
Each of these frontal portraits makes use of the same typology, the historical origins of which date back to the sculpted busts of the great figures of classical antiquity and which found its later interpretation in the early modern age in the painted portraits and self-portraits of intellectuals and artists produced from the Renaissance onwards.