Valls, 1922- Barcelona, 1988. Photographer. Illustrious Vallenc
In this building was born, on March 19, 1922, the photographer Francesc Catalá Roca, brother of historian and photographer Pere Catalá Roca and prestigious son photographer and publicist Pere Catalá i Pic. As a young man, at the age of 13, Francisco entered the world of photography in his father's photographic studio.
Technically formatted with his father, Francesc Catalá Roca opened his own studio in 1947, in Barcelona, from where he worked for several magazines and publications, such as Revista, Destino or La Vanguardia, illustrated a considerable number of books on artistic subjects or reports; and took photographs for film posters.
In 1953, he made his first individual exhibition in Barcelona, with a photographic work that already showed a mature professional, who knew how to unite the solid knowledge of the technique with an outstanding creative capacity, in a work in which the visual instinct prevails and the precise opinion of what was real according to Catalá Roca.
In his work, Catalá Roca directed his confident gaze at the decisive details of things, with the intention of communicating in a direct way his own vision of reality. The details of the reality of Catalá Roca's work turned him into a bridge between the avant-garde of the 1930s and the new documentary avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s.
The work of Francisco Catalán Roca has been recognized internationally, which led him to receive, throughout his life numerous awards and recognitions. His photography had a decisive influence on the work of the photographers of the realist generation of the fifties and sixties.
(Francisco Catalán Roca was the most important photographer of his time, considered by many critics to be the most outstanding Catalan photographer of the 20th century)
