Friday, April 11, 2025
Projection: TONI CATANY. THE TEMPS I SEW THEM
Director: Cesc Mulet
Country: Spain
Any: 2015
Duration: 55 min
V.O.: Catalan / Spanish, English, French
“The photos I take are autobiographical, whether they are of a body or a peach. When I need to express myself, the photos I take have to enter through my heart.” Sometimes the photographer’s studio does not reflect the artist. In the case of Toni Catany, his home-studio in Barcelona is the Venice he inhabits every day. His obsession is the why of things and the passage of time. He works in all genres: still lifes, portraits, nudes, landscapes,… Always in a particular way, without belonging to any school. An intrepid traveller, he travels across the five continents in search of the Mediterranean that marked his childhood in Mallorca. Toni Catany (1942-2013). He left his chemistry studies for photography and his first solo exhibition was at the Aixelà gallery in Barcelona in 1972. Thus began a professional career that became international when he was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France (1991). In 2001 he received the National Prize for Fine Arts (Generalitat de Catalunya) and the National Prize for Photography (Ministry of Culture). In 2002 the MNAC, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, organised an exhibition of his entire career. In 2003, in his homeland, the Government of the Balearic Islands awarded him the Ramon Llull Prize.
About TONI CATANY INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
Since its creation in 2014, the Toni Catany Foundation has collaborated with public institutions to promote the creation and management of an international photography centre based in Llucmajor (Mallorca), following the wishes of the artist from Llucmajor. Since March 2023, this centre is already a reality, and the Toni Catany Foundation is in charge of its management.
The Toni Catany International Centre for Photography (CIFTC), the work of architect Josep Lluís Mateo and located in the space occupied by the houses of Toni Catany and Tomàs Monserrat, aims to become an active organisation with local and global projection for the promotion of photographic culture, as well as for the knowledge, preservation and dissemination of the work of Toni Catany (1942-2013) through exhibitions and a programme of cultural and educational activities.
The Centre also has an Archive area where the work of Toni Catany and his collections are preserved. The Toni Catany archive is probably one of the most important archives of contemporary photography in Mallorca, and is among the most important in Spain. It is made up of 165,000 negatives, 15,000 positives on paper, portfolios, author books, travel notebooks, 500 positives by other contemporary authors, a collection of old photography consisting of approximately 2,000 photos on paper, 500 photos on glass, 500 negatives on plastic, 80 daguerreotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes and other special formats, 15 albums, the Tomàs Monserrat collection, with almost 900 glass plates, and the bibliographic collection, which includes approximately 6,500 documents.
