Francisco Ontañón

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, 1930 – Madrid, 2008)

His curiosity about photography led him to become a member of the Photographic Association of Catalonia in 1956. There he met Masats, Maspons, Colom, Terré, Cubaró, Miserachs, and Casademont, members of the small Catalan group behind Afal magazine.

He began his professional career in 1957 when he became a graphic editor at the Europa Press agency, where he worked until 1961.

In 1959, he moved to Madrid and worked as a reporter for various leading media outlets, developing a very personal style of reporting.

He was one of the founders of the La Palangana group, created in 1959 within the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid. The intentions of this group of photographers were mainly to move away from academic criteria and pictorialism, as well as to provide a truthful testimony of their time. To this end, they turned their gaze to the outskirts of the city and to the villages.

Ontañón reported from Brussels, Palestine, Washington, Rabat, among other places, contributing to the weekly magazine Actualidad Española between 1965 and 1968, and later working for the Codex publishing group and its press agency Picadilly Press.

At the end of the 1960s, he returned to Actualidad Española magazine and, in collaboration with Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, produced a weekly collectible series on animals in Spain and Africa. This later gave rise to the book Animales salvajes de África oriental (Wild Animals of East Africa).

For more than forty years, he collaborated closely with the Ministry of Tourism, producing numerous advertising campaigns, brochures, and posters, some of which earned him international awards.

He collaborated with the Sunday supplement of El País newspaper and with Iberia airline in the creation of a collection of posters promoting Spain abroad.

In 1992, Barcelona City Council published its posters for that year’s Olympic Games and commissioned him to produce the official book of the Olympics.

Throughout his career, he received numerous awards, including: the Meliá National Award for Photojournalism (1972); the Ministry of Culture’s Popular Arts and Traditions Award for two consecutive years (1982 and 1983); and the Ortiz Echagüe International Photography Award (1984 and 1989).

His work appears in the following books: Photography Year Book 1965 and 1966, Las fuentes de la Memoria (Sources of Memory) (1989), Historia de la fotografía en España (History of Photography in Spain) (1997), and 150 años de fotografía en España (150 Years of Photography in Spain) (1999), published by Publio López Monedéjar for Lunwerg, among others.

Selection of solo exhibitions:

2013

• Lo social y lo humano (The social and the human). Curators Fernando Peracho and Ángel Albarrán. Valid Foto BCN Gallery, Barcelona.

2012

• Más que niños (More than children). Curator Laura Terré. arteSonado Gallery. La Granja de San Ildefonso, Segovia.

2006

• La vitrina del fotógrafo. Paco Ontañón. Comisariada por Laura Terré. Palau Robert (Barcelona), Centre d’Informació de Catalunya, Generalitat de Catalunya.

Selection of group exhibitions:

1957

• He exhibited for the first time, while still an amateur, at the Agrupación Fotográfica de Cataluña (Photographic Association of Catalonia) in Barcelona.

1958

• New Generation Photographers (Afal Group), Pescara Biennial, Pescara and Milan.
• Young Spanish photography (Afal Group). Albert I International Exhibition. Cercle Royal Photographique, Charleroi.
• Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, São Paulo.

1959

• Photographes d’Espagne et de France. Spanish Embassy Library, Paris, and traveling throughout Europe (Lyon, East Berlin, Moscow, Rome, Fermo, and Milan).

1961

• International Salon of Photographic Portraits, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

1962

• Eleven Spanish photographers in Paris, French Institute of Tourism, Paris

1982

• Spring Photography Festival, Government of Catalonia, Palau de la Virreína, Barcelona.
• Catalan photography from the 1950s. Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona.
• Catalan photography of the 1950s. Center for Catalan Studies at Paris-Sorbonne University, Paris, Tarbes, Albi, Toulouse, and Perpignan.

1988

• Photographers from the Madrid School, Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid.

1990

• History of Photojournalism in Catalonia, 1976-1985, Barcelona City Council, Palau de la Virreina.

1991

• Cuenca, Exhibition hall of the former Carmelite convent in Cuenca.

1992

• Times of Silence: Overview of Spanish photography in the 1950s and 1960s. Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Paris, Toulouse, Zarautz.

1993

• Selected images; Cualladío Collection. Valencian Institute of Modern Art, Valencia and Vigo.

1994

• Miguel Delibes and his world, University of Alcalá.

1998

• 150 years of photography in Spain. Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid.

2000

• History of photography in Catalonia from 1839 to 1990. National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona.

2005

• Spain in the 1950s. A decade of creation. Národní Galerie, Prague.
• The role of photography: Afal, Nueva Lente, and PhotoVision magazines. National Library, Madrid

2006

• The Afal Photography Group. 1956-1963. CAAC, Seville. Travel to Almeria and Guadalajara.
• Parallel Perspectives: Realist Photography in Italy and Spain. MNAC, Barcelona.