That's how it was...Exhibition: Nicolás Muller. The committed look

It is an exceptional personal archive dated between 1924-2014, which has, on the one hand, 2,4 linear meters of textual documents belonging to the most personal and familiar scope of the Hungarian-born photographer Nicolás Muller Grossmann and, on the other hand , with 80.303 photographic images on various media produced and collected throughout his professional life. The collection is completed with photographs, studies and other documents contributed by his daughter Ana Muller Lasa. 

The most voluminous section is the one that brings together the photographic production developed by the author during his extensive professional career, which began in the 30s in his native Hungary and continued later, in parallel with his flight from the advance of Nazism, in France, Portugal and Morocco. At the end of the 40s, he arrived in Spain, where he settled and developed the rest of his professional activity. This photographic part of the background allows us to differentiate two large areas of activity: photographic portraiture and documentary photography. 

The photographic portraits in the background reflect the themes of a professional photographer who receives commissions from individuals: baptisms, communions, weddings, family reunions and portraits of individuals belonging to the most diverse professional and social fields. The oldest images in this group correspond to the commissions that the author received in his studio in Tangier (Morocco) during the 40s, while the largest group corresponds to the photographs taken from 1948 in the studios he had in Madrid and those that he made on occasions, traveling to the homes and workplaces of prominent figures to carry out the commission. Along with anonymous characters, the portraits that are kept in the Regional Archive allow us to know a large part of the political, intellectual, artistic and scientific class of Spain at that time: Pío Baroja, Joaquín Rodrigo, Victorio Macho, Benjamín Palencia, Víctor D 'Ors, Carlos Saura, Tico Medina, Ana Mariscal, Antonio Bienvenida, Otto de Habsburgo, to name just a few examples. 

Documentary photography groups together all the production that Nicolás Muller makes in open spaces, where he captures with his camera the landscapes and people who are in them. These images are classified according to the countries where they are taken, the starting point being the 116 photographs dated between 1933-1938 of the “Hungary Stage”, all of them with an important social and human burden in which a poor peasant population stands out. and respectful of their customs and traditions. 

Something similar happens with the 48 images dated between 1938-1939 of the "France Stage", where the workers of the port of Marseille or the laundresses who carry out their work in what appear to be the canals of a big city stand out. The 310 images from 1939 of the “Portugal Stage” show different cities in this country, highlighting among them those of the port of Porto where female porters unload the merchandise in large baskets that they carry on their heads. 

The “Morocco Stage” groups 1.781 images dated between 1940-1947 in which Nicolás Muller shows a society with urban planning, clothing, customs and traditions totally different from the European world photographed in his previous works. The author shows through his photographs the daily life of the people living in the then Spanish Protectorate of Morocco (stalls and merchants in the souks, children in schools, trades and workshops, parties and customs), but also public activity of the Protectorate regime, with the High Commissioner and the Khalifa as its highest representatives. Special mention should be made of the reports on the arrival of German diplomats to the Tangier Legation (March 1941), the visit of the Khalifa to Tangier (March 1941) and the visit of Sultan Mohammed V to Tangier (April 1947). 

The rest of the images in the background belong to the “Spain Stage” and reflect the Spain of the 50s, 60s and 70s of the last century. They are photographs that show two different themes: on the one hand, the most characteristic landscapes, popular architecture, art and monuments of the country in which there are hardly any people, so the author's human imprint is missing; and, on the other, the traditions, customs and daily life of people of all classes and social conditions that populated Spain at that time: farmers doing agricultural tasks, miners leaving the mine, workers in the new industrial complexes, children playing, old people hanging out, women washing, among other examples. 

Along with the photographic production, the collection has a small volume of textual documents, among which the correspondence that the author maintained both with family and friends stands out (in this area, the letters he received from his father, Eugenio Muller, before his death in 1939) as well as with clients and suppliers of his studio. Although they are mostly written in Spanish, there are also examples of letters in English, French, German, Italian and Hungarian. The correspondence also reflects the important presence in the author's life of characters such as Federico Muelas, Lorenzo Goñi and Mathias Goeritz; his collaboration with the Institute of Political Studies; or the close relationship he maintained with the Ortega-Spottorno family, born of his friendship with José Ortega y Gasset. 

The thematic diversity, the uniqueness of a large part of the images, the variety of photographic supports used and the technical quality of the photographs make the Nicolás Muller Fund a historical testimony of the first magnitude of essential consultation by all those who wish to know the history and , above all, the life and customs of the anonymous people who lived for much of the twentieth century.

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