Ouka Leele, the images that awaken fantasy, theatricality and the dream world

  The renowned photographer, painter and poet participates in the PhotoESPAÑA 2021 Festival with the exhibition “Ouka Leele. Supernova”, which can be visited at the Círculo de Bellas Artes until October 24. This exhibition offers a retrospective of the artist's early works between 1970 and 1980 with audiovisual material, photographs, drawings and editorial projects for the occasion. In addition, you can see her facet as an illustrator in her black and white captures along with her successful photographic exhibition. Barber Shop. Ouka Leele's hallmark is present in this exhibition: it invites the viewer to wake up  endless fantasies in each of his compositions.

At the same time, the black and white snapshots painted by hand with watercolor and his first color compositions combining pop and neodadaist elements stand out; works belonging to the Madrid Movida period, of which Ouka Leele was one of the main representatives of this cultural movement.

Ouka Leele, the nickname by which Bárbara Allende Gil de Biedma is known, was born in Madrid in 1957. The origin of her nickname lies in a creation by the painter El Hortelano, who composed an invented star map in which a star named with the nickname of the artist. Among the awards given to Ouka Lele, the 2005 National Photography Award and the Community of Madrid Culture Award stand out. Her work is exhibited in numerous national and international museums.

For more information on this sample, you can visit the web page for more information

EColor does not exist, it is an invention of our gaze

These days you can enjoy the exhibition “Color. The knowledge of the invisible” offered by the Espacio Fundación Telefónica (Calle de Fuencarral nº 3), until January 9.  This exhibition invites visitors to discover all the nuances that color transmits to our lives.

Likewise, it should be noted that authors, researchers and technologists have reached the conclusion that color is important in our society as it communicates different values ​​that revolve around emotions and thoughts. It is for this reason that it has marked revolutions, empires, governments, civilizations... Even from a social point of view, these have expanded into flags, drawings... Furthermore, we cannot understand art without the presence of color.

For this reason, it has been shown that color is a mental construction of each person that can offer certainties at the same time as enigmas and questions. In this exhibition he tries to respond to these basic and relevant characteristics of the importance of color that has been fundamental in the course of humanity.

For more information, you can go to the web page of the event.

 Margaret Watkins, a transgressive American photographer

The metropolitan cultural center CentroCentro (Plaza de Cibeles, 1), as part of the PhotoESPAÑA 2021 Festival, is hosting a retrospective entitled Black Light, which commemorates the artistic and advertising career of the famous Canadian photographer Margaret Watkins (1884-1969). This photographic exhibition can be enjoyed until September 26 with 150 snapshots from the years 1914 to 1939.

In addition, you can see the last work that the photographer did before her death: a self-portrait where you can see the shadow of a woman with a hat that is projected on a staircase.

This artist shied away from the gender roles and traditions of the women of her time. She was a woman far ahead of her time: in 1920 she opened her own studio in New York and edited the annual Pictorial Photography in America. Also, she was a renowned advertising photographer thanks to her expressive originality (she worked for the famous New York department store Macy's). However, she not only devoted herself to this photographic style, but she also composed portraits, nudes, still life and landscape images.

In turn, she was a professor at the Clarence H. White Academy (her mentor, one of the forerunners of North American pictorialism and where she began in the world of photography),  but a dispute with his widow led her to move to Glasgow (United Kingdom). From there, in Europe, she began to photograph the reality of the streets of England, Germany, France and Russia; where she specialized as a photographer of facades and shop windows. Finally, she passed away in Glasgow in 1969.

For more information about the exhibition at CentroCentro, you can consult its websites.