Barcelona acquires the collection of the photographer Humberto Rivas
The Barcelona Institute of Culture has acquired a significant part of the photographer's collection with the aim of keeping it in the city and adding it to the public collections.
Part of the collection of the photographer Humberto Rivas (Buenos Aires, 1937 - Barcelona, 2009) was loaned to the Photographic Archive of Barcelona in 2017. This new acquisition completes the collection with more than 23,000 negatives, plates, slides and contacts, 6 models of photomontages, textual documentation (letters, articles, notes) and 200 original prints representative of the themes that characterise his work (portraits, still lifes, shop fronts, urban landscapes...).
The charisma and work of the photographer made possible the renewal of photographic rhetoric and the recognition of younger authors who did not adhere to the strict documentary style. Rivas won the National Photography Prize and the Barcelona City Council Plastic Arts Prize in 1997. In 2009, he was awarded the City's Gold Medal for Artistic Merit and a square in Can Basté (Nou Barris) was named after him. All this demonstrates Barcelona's deep-rootedness, importance and recognition of the photographer.
The definitive entry of the collection of Humberto Rivas, an essential author in Barcelona's photographic history, represents an important step in the consolidation of the AFB as a space of reference in the conservation, custody and dissemination of the city's photographic heritage.
