La Pedrera exposes “Colita, Just Because!”
The Fundació Catalunya - La Pedrera presents the first exhibition dedicated to Isabel Steva, one of the most prominent names in contemporary Catalan photography.
COLITA, the nickname of Isabel Steva Hernández (Barcelona, 1940), is one of the undisputed leading lights of contemporary Catalan photography. Direct, intelligent, sensitive, open-minded, critical and socially engagé, her work can be defined not only by its aesthetic but also by her involvement in the events that have taken place during the course of her life.
Her photographs, which eschew artifice and artistic pretension, are not merely documents that record reality but an expression of her experiences and opinions. Between them, they form a visual corpus that spans half a century of our recent history.
With the exhibition “Colita, Just Because!”, curated by Laura Terré, the Fundació Catalunya–La Pedrera presents the first retrospective of Colita’s work, a broad survey of her life and creative career that follows the various paths she has pursued in her vast photographic archive: from the world of flamenco to the feminist struggle, film, Nova Cançó, the Gauche Divine, the performing-arts crowd, and the life of her city, Barcelona, all seen through her eyes filled with purpose and humour.