In 1939, before the relentless advance of fascism, Robert Capa left his photographic studio in Paris and flees to the United States. His collaborator, Tchiki Weiss, saves 3 boxes with 4,500 negatives of images made during the Civil War by Capa, Chim (David Seymour) and Gerda Taro, the great masters of war photojournalism.
It is known as the Mexican Suitcase. Disappeared for decades, it was located in Mexico and now, thanks to the tenacity of the ICP to recover it and make its content public, the National Museum presents part of this valuable photographic material for the first time in Spain. Negative rolls that show us the original sequence of the photo published and reveal unpublished scenes, at the same time as the masterful technique of the 3 photographers. Outstanding graphic testimony of life on the front or trenches, the ravages of bombings on the civilian population or drama in the refugee camps, the Mexican Suitcase is a mirror of our history.
From the negatives of the images of the Spanish Civil War Layer we gradually deepened into what was a hard, sad and at the same time destructive and anguished world.
One of the images in particular, which shows a soldier on the bridge of Teruel with an environment massacred by the war, led us to work with the corrugated steel in the form of mesh electrosoldada, to reflect this hard and complex atmosphere. These black structures, along with a few wooden contrasting frameworks and their own rooms, are the ones that support and show the work in various formats and sizes. Each space allows you to simultaneously glimpse the rest of the works and exhibition spaces through the steel mesh, creating cross-stitching and contrasting looks.
