Marcel Giró

Marcel Giró was born in Badalona in 1912. He was the second of six brothers. Since he was a child, he was in love with mountains and photography.

After the Spanish civil war, he married a Catalonian woman, Palmira Puig, and they moved to Brazil where they became citizens. In Brazil, Giró resumed his hobby of photography and he decided to become professional. In 1953 he opened his first studio in São Paulo: Estúdio Giró.

Marcel Giró became one of the country’s leading photographers, a leading member of what became known as the Escuela Paulista. This movement, a pioneer of modern photography in Brazil, was born around the Foto Cine Club Bandeirante, in the 1950s, with photographers such as José Yalenti, Thomaz Farkas, Benedito Junqueira Duarte, Gertrudes Altschul, Geraldo de Barros, Rubens Teixeira Scavone, German Lorca, Alfio Trovato and Gaspar Gasparian between others.

Giró was also a pioneer of the publicity photography in Brazil. His studio was staffed by young assistants who would later become great multi-award winning photographers such as JR Duran and Marcio Scavone.

After his wife’s death, in 1979, he quitted professional and artistic photography. He died in Mirasol, Barcelona, in 2011, when he was 98 years old.

His work has been included in important international collections, such as the MoMa (New York) -which can be seen in the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 from March to June 2021-, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC, Barcelona), Tate Modern (United Kingdom), among others.

Selection of exhibitions:

2020 Fotografia Moderna. Geraldo de Barros, Gertrudes Altschul, Thomaz Farkas, Marcel Giró, Gaspar Gasparian e Paulo Pires. (Sao Paulo, BR)
2020 DUPLO OLHAR. Pintura e fotografia modernas brasileiras (Rio de Janeiro, BR)
2019 Moderna para Sempre. Fotografia Modernista Brasileira na Coleção Itaú Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. (Santiago, Chile)
2019 The Photography Show Presented by AIPAD (Nueva York, US)
2018 Photo London, Somerset House, de la mano de Galería Rocío SantaCruz (London, GB)
2017  Paris Photo, de la mano de Galería Rocío SantaCruz (París, FR)