Blanco White. Nacho Criado (PHotoESPAÑA 2025. Sección Oficial)

From 4 June to 28 September, as part of the Official Section of the PHotoESPAÑA 2025 festival, the Círculo de Bellas Artes presents an exhibition dedicated to Nacho Criado, a key figure on the Spanish contemporary art scene who turned photography into a field of experimentation, action and memory.

Curated by César Borja, the exhibition includes photographs taken by Nacho Criado in the early 1970s, a period marked by his intense exploration of the image as a conceptual medium.

Nacho Criado (Mengíbar, Jaén, 1943 – Madrid, 2010), winner of the National Prize for the Visual Arts in 2009, used photography as a medium for formal experimentation and poetic reflection, at a difficult time in history marked by the final years of Franco’s regime.

Blanco, a title that alludes to a key piece exhibited in 1974 at the Goethe-Institut Madrid, reflects on language and action through the photographic image. In it, the interplay between positive and negative becomes a visual metaphor about the limits of representation and the expansion of meaning beyond the word. 

Image credits:

• White (close-up of slide), 1974. © Nacho Criado
• Whitewashing of a wall (close-up). Mengíbar, 1973. © Nacho Criado
• Blanco (Goethe-Institut Project 1974). © Nacho Criado