Humberto Rivas

HUMBERTO RIVAS (Argentina, 1937 – Spain, 2009)
“Homage to Man Ray,” 1979.
Silver gelatin photograph.
Work exhibited in “Homage to Man Ray,” Galería Eude, Barcelona, 1980.
Bears a blue ink stamp reading “Foto Humberto Rivas”
Provenance: Eude Gallery, Barcelona.
Measurements: 16 x 21 cm.
The piece “Homage to Man Ray” (1979), created at the London Zoo, marks a transitional period in his career, when he was beginning to develop a more refined visual language. In it, Rivas engages with the legacy of Man Ray, one of the great innovators of 20th-century photography.
An Argentine photographer who lived in Spain for much of his life and was awarded Spain’s National Photography Prize in 1997, Humberto Rivas studied at the School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and held his first solo exhibition in 1959 at the Galatea Gallery. During those years, he still combined photography with drawing and painting, but beginning in 1970, following the closure of the Torcuato di Tella Institute, where he had been working, he decided to devote himself entirely to photography. He worked on both artistic and advertising projects through his own agency until he finally settled in Barcelona in 1976, fleeing the political situation in Argentina. It was also around this time that he began teaching at various institutions in Argentina, Spain, and Portugal. His work is currently represented in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Mar del Plata, the Museum of Modern Art and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, the County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, the National Library of France in Paris, the MNAC in Barcelona, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the IVAM in Valencia, and in other major collections, both public and private.