Banco de España Madrid VII 2000

Banco de España Madrid VII 2000

  • 2000
  • Chromogenic print on paper
  • 120 x 120 cm
  • Edition 2/6
  • Cat. F_29
  • Acquired in 2001
By:
Carlos Martín

Candida Höfer’s photography has been defined as the portrait of an ‘absent architecture’, as she often returns to public or semi-public spaces with no human presence. However, the absence of people does not mean that there is no mark or imprint of the people who have passed through those spaces. On observing these images, It is as if people are expected to arrive and undertake and their everyday functions in the context of the institutional apparatus that they represent. The series of photographs taken in the Banco de España in 2000 reveals that same interest, with the added fact that it is an institution seen as a place that is difficult to access, even though it is public, given the security requirements inherent in its function. Höfer chose three groups of spaces according to their accessibility: two which are public (the main staircase and the library), two with limited access (the old historical archive and the entrance to the lifts to the Gold Chamber) and one whose use has varied over time (the Lobby at Plaza Cibeles, the main public entrance to the building before the extension opened in 1936).

Also in the year 2000, Höfer took photographs in other spaces of power and institutional representation in Spain, including the interiors of the royal palaces of Madrid and Aranjuez. The photo of the main stairs to the Bank’s building from the Paseo Del Prado shares with them a way of highlighting a certain opulence that is today in disuse, typical of the way that institutional architecture was seen in the 19th century. She seems to focus on the seams and textures of the Carrara marbles of the staircase under the gaze of the bust of José Echegaray sculpted by Lorenzo Coullaut, standing alone on its rotunda and looking out over the surrounding emptiness. A certain serial quality to the elements (the visual rhythm of the stairs, of the bannisters and the other decorative details that converge in the central opening) allows Höfer to delve further into the repetitive, into the search for an internal order in the architecture. This is repeated in the wrought iron latticework of the library, which was once the Trading Floor of the building, designed by Eduardo Adaro at the end of the 19th century. But that serial character, showing the interest in the minimalist of Bernd & Hilla Becher’s inherited by Höfer, is clearest in the photo of the historical archive, with a notable vanishing point where the compactus lines end with documentation and the rhythmical gaps of the windows, shown as they were before the recent full refurbishment of the space by the Paredes Pedrosa architectural studio. Apart from the intrinsic value of the works as part of Candida Höfer’s photographic oeuvre, these photos document the spaces shown at a certain point in their history, in a building whose interior has undergone significant changes to update and adapt its premises to its different functions.

A specific case of a space whose use has changed with the passing of the years is the large room that visitors encounter on entering the building at the corner of Calle de Alcalá and Paseo del Prado. Höfer shot this space while it was being used temporarily as a warehouse or holding place for the paintings of the Banco de España Collection. Masterpieces from the historical collection, such as San Carlos Borromeo Giving Communion to the Plague-Stricken by Mariano Salvador Maella, Angel with the Instruments of the Flagellation of Christ by Juan de Valdés Leal and one of Francisco de Goya’s Caprices can be seen there, along with contemporary works such as pieces by Juan Giralt and Pablo Palazuelo. The effect obtained is a sort of challenge by the works, an imitation of the presence of human beings in their specificity and diversity, to the serial forcefulness of the huge pillars and pilasters supporting the first floor.

The photo of the entrance of the lifts leading to the strongroom is special. It can be interpreted as an architectural portrait of the unknown: the place eight floors below this anteroom that houses part of the country’s gold reserves. The fact that the large steel door is closed distances the photo from the marked perspective of the rest of the series and imposes a clear frontal presence whose brilliance seems, paradoxically, to be a negative. Central banks have been considered as the heirs of classical temples, which often housed the treasury of their city-State in their cella, so the photo is a portrait of a barred entrance to the sacred, to what is kept from public view and thus feeds the legend of the gold chamber holds in the collective imagination. It is not only a place where people are not photographed but also, literally, a picture of a space where humans do not usually tread except on rare occasions, under strictly controlled access. 

In the Banco de España’s main building, Candida Höfer found a way to approach different types of spaces that she had already worked or would work on later. The libraries were the subject of a specific series, published in the Libraries monograph (in that same year photos were taken in Spain of the libraries of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial and the Sabatini Building of the Museo Reina Sofia, which has now been repurposed). Sometimes messy, at others coldly tidy storehouses for paintings again appear in her work in the Bilderdepot Sammlung Essl Klosterneuburg 2003 I (2003), as do representative spaces marked by a certain institutional pomp such as those she found in the aforementioned royal palaces in Spain, also in 2000. This all reveals her ability to apply an essentialist, searching eye not only to the architecture that is most conducive to it (that of the modernist movement and its derivatives), but also to a profoundly eclectic building such as the Banco de España.

Carlos Martín

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Candida Höfer
Eberswalde 1944

Candida Höfer studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf from 1973 to 1976 and majored in Films with Ole John; from 1976 to 1982 she studied Photography with Bernd and Hilla Becher. The influence of the latter was decisive in Candida Höfer’s shift from a more social style of photography in the 1970s to a style characterised by the starkness, simplicity and objectivity of spaces of public utility and representation, usually in the form of strict frontal takes with balanced compositions, high definition and meticulous images. Höfer photographs architectural spaces inside buildings with a great burden of history, public functions and cultural value such as libraries, archives, monuments, museums, galleries, churches, banks, etc. when they are empty, showing places and times that are usually inaccessible to the public. That turns architecture into a tangible print of the immensity of the memory that they contain. She is consistent in her work and faithful to her essence, which has made her of the one of the leading representatives of the Düsseldorf School.

In 1975 she began to exhibit at solo shows and her work has been showcased at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany, 1993); the Kunstverein Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany, 1998); the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, United States, 2000); the Louvre (Paris, 2007); the Belem Cultural Centre (Lisbon, 2006); the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (Karlsruhe, Germany, 2008); Vigo Contemporary Art Museum (2010); the Andalusian Contemporary Art Centre (Seville, 2010); the Museum fur Neue Kunst (Friberg, Germany, 2011, 2012); and the Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf, Germany, 2013-2014). She has also taken part in events such as Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany, 2002), represented Germany together with Martin Kippenberger at the Venice Bienniale (2003) and was part of a group exhibition at the National Gallery of Art Washington D. C. (2016).

Roberto Díaz

 
«Architectures of Silence», Museo Municipal de Málaga (Malaga, 2001). «From Goya to our times. Perspectives of the Banco de España Collection», Musée Mohammed VI d'Art Moderne et Contemporain (Rabat, 2017-2018). «(UN)COMMON VALUES. Two Corporate Collections of Contemporary Art», National Bank of Belgium (Brussels, 2022).
Yolanda Romero & Isabel Tejeda De Goya a nuestros días. Miradas a la Colección Banco de España, Madrid & Rabat, AECID y FMN, 2017. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.