Marcel Giró

15 July 2022

Nine images of the photographer Palmira Puig are incorporated to the Museum of Urgell and Morera.

The Museum of Art Jaume Morera and the Regional Museum of Urgell-Tàrrega, have incorporated nine works of Palmira Puig, acquired by the Provincial Council, which can be seen until September 11 in an exhibition to the equipment of Lleida.

"It is a special day because it is a work of maximum artistic significance," said in yesterday's presentation the director of the Morera, Jaume Navarro on the collection of nine black and white images, of which three are original copies of the time and six are later copies. Palmira Puig (Tàrrega, 1912 - Barcelona, 1978). The photographer, born into a family of cultural tradition, had to go into exile after the Civil War and settled with her husband, also a photographer Marcel Giró, in Brazil. She was part of the Brazilian artistic avant-garde, being the first woman accepted into the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, the focus of the so-called Paulista School.

Even so, her work had been unknown until a decade ago when an investigation began around the legacy of Marcel Giró, initiated by her nephew Toni Ricart Giró and the gallery owner Rocío Santa Cruz, which concluded that not all the works were his and that two different languages could be seen, that of Palmira characterized "by the humanist spirit and the modern style" and by "the poetry and elegance in the treatment of still lifes, landscapes and portraits".
The mayoress of Tàrrega, Alba Pijuan, said that with this acquisition the photographer from Tarragona, "a progressive woman, as reflected in her images, who, like so many others, has not had the recognition she deserved", was put "in her rightful place in history".

The gallery owner, who made the first monographic exhibition of Palmira Puig in the State, stressed that the price of the works, which have cost the Provincial Council about 45,000 euros, has already doubled after its appearance in an exhibition at the MoMA in New York on Brazilian experimental photography.