15 artworks to celebrate Art with Pride: Javier Díaz Guardiola x RedCollectors

For another year, on the occasion of the Pride celebrations, Javier Díaz-Guardiola, journalist, critic and curator, presents a selection of 15 works to celebrate and collect LGTBIQ+ art .Among those chosen are works by Pedro Almodóvar, Colita, Cristina Toledo, David Trullo, among others .Javier Díaz-Guardiola is currently coordinator of the art, architecture and design section of ABC Cultural, editor-in-chief of ABC de ARCO.

"I have tried to make a transversal selection that not only included LGTBI creators, but also other artists who have dealt with these issues or who deal with topics, such as race or female discrimination, in which the basis of hatred used by a certain sector of the heteropatriarchy is the same that is used, consciously or unconsciously, to subjugate, degrade or humiliate people because of their sexual condition." 

- Javier Diaz-Guardiola

Do you want to know with Javier Díaz-Guardiola his selection, this Thursday, June 22nd at 19h he will explain it to us on Zoom: I want to sign up for the talk!

  Pepe Espaliú

"Espaliú turned his "Carrying" into an icon of the fight against the stigmatization of those affected by HIV, but we cannot forget that he was also a good sculptor. This work testifies to this and to his concern for the body, reflecting through this technique his interests in suffering, injury, isolation and pleasure" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.

Joana Biarnés

"I select Joana for being a pioneer in many matters, among them, being one of the first Spanish photojournalists, which forced her to make a place for herself in a world of men, and for having photographed a large number of gay icons of past generations, such as Marisol or Ava Gardner. Speaking of icons, it is inevitable to mention in this same gallery "El baño del Charlton Heston", by Ramón Massats, a nude 'by stages', long before the arrival of Destape." -Javier Diaz-Guardiola

Cristina Toledo

"In her last individual at Cámara Oscura Galeria de Arte, Cristina Toledo, from painting, addressed the topics of "femininity" and what is considered feminine. It is interesting that in that gallery of portraits a piece like this one is included, especially in the face of the howls of a certain radical feminism that seems to be in charge of giving the cards of suitability about what a woman is or is not, forgetting alternative realities" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.

Hugh Mangum

"Since the mechanisms that drive hatred are the same against sexual or gender identity as against race, I include this American photographer who, at the end of the 19th century, dared to portray whites and blacks on equal terms, restoring dignity to the latter" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.

David Trullo

"Little has been recognized to this author, 'fake' photographer, appropriator of images, his role in the elaboration of a genealogy of queer in Spain, generating referential models in which the LGTBI community can be reflected and proposing an alternative reading to the official History" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.  

Juan Cabello Arribas 

"Collagista, the best of both worlds, Brazil, where he spent a season, and Spain, his current residence, merge in "Madrid Rio", where the most iconic architectures of the city merge with the bodies of the kids on the beaches of the South American country. Winks and surprises are guaranteed in the rest of his eclectic and baroque proposals" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.  

Juan Carlos Martínez

"Tribute to a young artist whose departure shocked us all at the beginning of the year. Martinez sought with his photography what Bresson called "the precise instant", a light and a special beauty that put the male body in the foreground, acting as a hunter-voyeur of unrepeatable moments" -Javier Diaz-Guardiola- "A tribute to a young artist whose departure shocked us all earlier this year.  

 Pedro Almodóvar

"Behind a great filmmaker there must always be a good photographer. At the end of the day, it's all about composing images, whether in still or moving shots. The director from La Mancha, a great collector of art, is also a lover of this technique, with which he composes still lifes that he has even included in some of his films" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola- .

Olalla Gómez Valdericeda.

"Eloquent series in which the young creator analyzes verbal violence, focusing our attention on the relationship between weapons and many of the terms used to refer to male genitalia. In the same line, 'Healthy Men' relates great myths of thought and literature with unorthodox behavior towards women (or homosexuals), since, as she mentions: "The aggressors are not sick, but healthy children of the patriarchy" " -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.

 Angel Pantoja

"Specialized in scenes where reality merges with dream, paying special attention to the body, this painter offers with 'Binaryland' an ironic cartography to confront and orient oneself among unknown realities that go beyond the canonical conceptions of man-woman" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.

Pilar Aymerich

"National Photography Award in 2021, it is worth mentioning the documentary work of this photojournalist of marked political content on the reality of the LGTBI collective in the late seventies. In addition to this look at transsexuality, also hers is, present in RedCollectors, the series about the first carnivals allowed in Spain in Vilanova after the Civil War. The year was 1973. Transvestism, with consent and intent, in abundance" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola- .

Colita

"Colita is another of the great names of documentary photography in our country. His are these images in which one of the protagonists is Ocaña, a mythical character of the gay world of the Transition in Spain, and of the first demonstration for the rights of the collective in Barcelona in 1977, also available on the platform" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.

Juanjo Martínez Cánovas

 Alex Domènech

"This creator began in the cinematographic field to later realize that he was more interested in the still image. From photography he analyzes his daily life, and sketches a kind of logbook in which intimacy is humanized and brought to the foreground" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola-.

Federico Granell

"To enter the watercolors of this author's notebooks is to immerse oneself in a marvelous world with its own soundtrack. And it is inevitable that, in some of his pages, one comes across the exaltation of love even of a homosexual couple. Because everyone has the right to live their own movie scene" -Javier Díaz-Guardiola- .

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