Ramón Masats (1931)
Caldes de Montbui (Barcelona)
Caldes de Montbui (Barcelona)
Ramón Masats is the most important photographer in Spanish History. With his innate sensitivity he has taught three generations of artists to turn the essence of people and their context into images.
He does not need tricks. The absolute rationality of his compositions is constructed with simplicity, and this is sufficient to excite us. Sadness, happiness, poverty, stereotypes . . . . . nothing escapes his restless lens.
Masats felt that his true vocation was photography at a very early age. It was in the 1950s when he created his first notable works, with Ricard Terré and Xabier Miserachs at the Royal Photography Society of Catalonia.
The leap to Madrid happened in 1957. The magazine “Gaceta Ilustrada” (Illustrated Gazette) offered him the opportunity to travel all over Spain to capture the essence of the country and its people, and Masats’s most famous photographs were produced on this trip. The radically different style of some of the compositions, some that are now still surprising, led Otto Steiner to invite him at that time to participate in the exhibition “Images Inventées” (Invented Images) that brought him acclaim in Brussels.
His professional activity at that time was tied to various and varied publications. He worked with the magazine Mundo Hispánico (Hispanic World), among others, and with the daily newspapers Arriba and Ya. He also approached the cinema: “El Cid,” “55 Days in Beijin,” “The Fall of the Roman Empire.” He did splendid photographic reporting of the making of these films. He also directed series and documentaries for television in the mid 1960s.
His works have been enriched with texts from such great masters of literature as Miguel Delibes, with whom he created “Old Stories from Old Castille.” Starting in the eighties he began to publish monographic books, after his return to photography. “Los Sanfermines” (The San Fermin festivities) initiated a tendency that would continue with “Andalucía” “Al-Andalus” and others.
Ramón Masats raises the visual chronicling of postwar Spain to the category of Art. In 2004 he received the National Photography Prize.
He does not need tricks. The absolute rationality of his compositions is constructed with simplicity, and this is sufficient to excite us. Sadness, happiness, poverty, stereotypes . . . . . nothing escapes his restless lens.
Masats felt that his true vocation was photography at a very early age. It was in the 1950s when he created his first notable works, with Ricard Terré and Xabier Miserachs at the Royal Photography Society of Catalonia.
The leap to Madrid happened in 1957. The magazine “Gaceta Ilustrada” (Illustrated Gazette) offered him the opportunity to travel all over Spain to capture the essence of the country and its people, and Masats’s most famous photographs were produced on this trip. The radically different style of some of the compositions, some that are now still surprising, led Otto Steiner to invite him at that time to participate in the exhibition “Images Inventées” (Invented Images) that brought him acclaim in Brussels.
His professional activity at that time was tied to various and varied publications. He worked with the magazine Mundo Hispánico (Hispanic World), among others, and with the daily newspapers Arriba and Ya. He also approached the cinema: “El Cid,” “55 Days in Beijin,” “The Fall of the Roman Empire.” He did splendid photographic reporting of the making of these films. He also directed series and documentaries for television in the mid 1960s.
His works have been enriched with texts from such great masters of literature as Miguel Delibes, with whom he created “Old Stories from Old Castille.” Starting in the eighties he began to publish monographic books, after his return to photography. “Los Sanfermines” (The San Fermin festivities) initiated a tendency that would continue with “Andalucía” “Al-Andalus” and others.
Ramón Masats raises the visual chronicling of postwar Spain to the category of Art. In 2004 he received the National Photography Prize.