Robert Capa, American soldiers landing on Omaha Beach, D-Day, Normandy, France, June 6, 1944 ©
Estate of Cornell Capa.The exhibition This is War! Robert Capa at work is a travelling project that up to now has been seen in New York and London, among other cities. It will present a hundred and fifty photographs taken by Capa in the wars around the world that he covered as a war photographer during the 1930s and 40s and which have made him one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century.
During the Spanish Civil War Robert Capa (real name Endre Enrö Friedmann, born Budapest 1913 – died Thai Binh, Indochina, 1954) took some of the most famous pictures of the conflict, such as Death of a Militiaman, a snapshot of the moment in which a republican militiaman falls fatally wounded at Cerro Muriano (Córdoba), and which is perhaps one of the most emblematic war photographs of all time.
After the Spanish Civil War had finished, in 1939 and 1940 Capa covered other conflicts, such as the Japanese invasion of China, and he photographed some of the scenes and historic moments of the Second World War. He witnessed the landing of the allied troops in Normandy on D-Day and the entry of the American troops into Leipzig at first hand. Capa was one of the first to start using small cameras, like the famous Leica, which gave him great mobility. This way he was able to take photographs on the front line and share the experiences of the soldiers in the trenches at the front.
In 1947 he founded the Magnum photography agency in Paris with Henri Cartier Bresson, David Seymour, “Chim”, and George Rodger. In 1954 he was assigned by Life magazine to go to Indochina, where he was killed when he stepped on a landmine. The exhibition will be completed by an important group of documents (25 magazines and 10 letters) that will help to contextualize his work and the echo it had in the media of the time. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya
