Alberto Schommer

ALBERTO SCHOMMER (Vitoria, 1923- San Sebastián, 2015).
"Miquel Barceló",1989. Attitudes Series (1988-1989).
Photo on silver gelatin.
Signed in pencil on the back.
Measures: 40,5 x 30 cm; 59 x 48 cm (frame).
Alberto Schommer was the son of Alberto Schommer Koch, a photographer who emigrated from Germany, and who introduced him to the world of photography. During the 1940s his father opened a studio, where he learned and worked with photography. Later, however, Schommer's son Schommer began his academic training in the field of fine art. He studied in the German city of Cologne and Paris. One of his best known works are his portraits, which reached the public through his collaboration with the newspaper El País. These portraits, mainly recognised regionally, but also globally by capturing the portraits of important figures such as Andy Warhol and other personalities of Spanish life, have been recognised as his best works. In this famous series, called Psychological Portraits, he showed power, economy and culture. His peculiar approach to portraiture had a great impact in the 1970s and 1980s, and his photographs became a visual chronicle of the transition. Despite his age, Alberto Schommer remained as professionally active as ever until his death in 2015

The Spanish government awarded him the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2008 and the National Photography Prize in 2013. In 1996 he became a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Throughout his artistic career, he has travelled all over the world with hundreds of works, has published almost a hundred books and has worked as a teacher in prestigious seminars and competitions. His work has been exhibited all over the world, from Japan to the United States (Center for Creative Photography in Tucson) and he has received numerous awards for his work.