What does a barefoot girl sleeping on a threshing floor or a village gathered to celebrate an ancestral tradition tell about who we are? In 1973, at the age of just 24 and after receiving a grant for artistic creation from the Juan March Foundation, Cristina García Rodero set out on a journey through the villages of Spain in order to document and preserve their festivals, rites, traditions and ways of life, armed with photographic equipment, a few questions and her way of looking.
The trip resulted in one of the most important milestones of photography in our country that, almost as in a gesture that could be interpreted as love for photography, can be visited since February 14 in the free exhibition Cristina García Rodero. Hidden Spain.
After having passed through Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes and La Malagueta Cultural Center, the exhibition now travels to the Spanish Museum of Abstract Art in Cuenca, in the privileged setting of the Hanging Houses, where it will be on display until May 11, 2025.
The series, which consists of more than 150 images, has gone down in history for having been able to “fix the face and spirit of a moment in the history of this country,” in the words of the foundation that awarded her the grant.
Rodero describes this journey to the entrails of the deepest Spain through a will: “I tried to photograph the mysterious, true and magical soul of popular Spain, with its passion, love, humor, tenderness, rage, pain, with its truth”.
Visiting hours of Hidden Spain
Admission to the exhibition is free and open to the public and can be visited during the following hours:
- Monday: closed.
- Tuesday to Friday and holidays: from 11am to 2pm and from 4pm to 6pm.
- Saturdays: from 11h to 14h and from 16h to 20h.
- Sundays: from 11 am to 2:30 pm.
Guided tours for the general public are from Tuesday to Friday, by reservation. You can consult the information on the museum’s website.
Parallel to the exhibition, on March 4 at 19h the Teatro Auditorio de Cuenca will host the screening of the documentary Cristina García Rodero: la mirada oculta, by Carlota Nelson, in which the director travels with García Rodero “the places and celebrations of hidden Spain while reviewing her own life”.