Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Caldera colorada [Caldera colorada]

Image caption
AXEL HÜTTE

Caldera colorada [Caldera colorada]

  • 2004
  • Digital pint on paper
  • 144,5 x 165 cm
  • Cat. F_105
  • Acquired in 2004
By:
Isabel Tejeda

Caldera colorada (2004) is a photograph by Axel Hütte belonging to the In Foreign Lands series, which was shown in full at the Telefónica Foundation in Madrid in 2008. In this series, produced between 2004 and 2008, the German photographer followed the steps of the conquerors and explorers in search of the New World, almost as if he were making a map. He therefore took photos in the Canary Islands, Belize, Mexico, New Mexico, Ecuador, Venezuela, Chile and, back in Spain, in Aranjuez. The photograph in the Banco de España Collection is a volcanic landscape on the island of Lanzarote.

Hütte’s simple yet patient methodology is typical of a traveller in the most classical sense: one who prepares their journey using historical and geographical information but also (as Miguel Fernández-Cid has pointed out) literary readings and artistic references. He thus approaches the landscape slowly, allowing himself to be seduced by what he sees, which he mixes with his expectations and with a knowledge of the customs of the people who live there. In this regard, some authors have related his work to that of British photographer Hamish Fulton, who seeks to reflect the experience of his encounters with the landscape. In the case of Hütte, that landscape is understood in its cultural acceptance as a product of a way of looking.

The resulting photos avoid stereotyped views by showing an experience of space that reflects its margins, from known and marked space to what other images always hide or ignore, tightening the possible. Those landscapes without people are related to the Romantic idea of the sublime but also (in the case of the arid, nearly abstract landscape of Lanzarote in question here) with the modernity and tactility of the informalists and with Rothko’s horizontal stripes.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Axel Hütte
Essen 1951

Axel Hütte studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (1973-1981), where he was taught by Bernd and Hilla Becher and his fellow students included some of the leading figures of the rehabilitation of photography undertaken by the so-called Düsseldorf School or New German Photography. His work, which was supported by grants to study in London and Venice from 1986 to 1988, was initially in black and white and small format, and was inspired by the essentialism of New Objectivity in urban landscapes with no human figures. His photographic work, developed around travel, began in the 1990s with a trip through southern Europe, and comprised large format photographs in colour. He achieved formal perfection and extraordinary details, capturing landscapes focused both on the architecture of cities and on the majesty and sublime character of nature; he embraced the idea of dissolving human dimensions by doing away with spatial references, in blocks of colour, elements and textures that are diluted or repeated ad infinitum, overriding any cultural or geographical references. Special mention should be made of his series Fog (1994-2003), which includes photos of Switzerland, Spain, Iceland, Germany and Hawaii; Tropics (1998-2002), with photographs of Australia, South Africa, Costa Rica and Brazil; and Night (1998-2003), in which he returns to the idea of architecture as landscape through night-time images of buildings in the most important cities of the planet, including Paris, London and New York.

Since his first solo show at the Konrad Fischer Gallery in Düsseldorf in 1984, his work has been widely showcased at major international institutions, including exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany, 1993); and the Fotomuseum Winterthur (Winterthur, Switzerland, 1997). He has also exhibited in Spain at the Velázquez Palace, Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2004), the César Manrique Foundation (Lanzarote, 2004), the Telefónica Foundation (Madrid, 2008), the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (Valencia, 2009) and the San Telmo Museum (San Sebastián, 2014).

Roberto Díaz

 
«In Foreign Lands» (Madrid, 2008).
Francisco Serrano En tierras extrañas, Madrid, Fundación Telefónica, 2008. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.