Humberto Rivas was born in Buenos Aires in 1937. From 1976 until his death in 2009 he lived and worked as a photographer and teacher in Barcelona. Origins Humberto Rivas descended from Italian and Portuguese immigrants (his Portuguese grandmother, a washerwoman, taught him that language). His parents were textile workers, and at the age of thirteen he himself began to work in the trade, and would spend weekends training to be a professional cyclist with his father. When he was seventeen he began a correspondence drawing course and sold his racing bicycle in order to buy a painter’s easel. The following year he started working as an apprentice at an advertising agency and was able to purchase his first camera, an Argus 35 mm with fixed rangefinder. In 1959 he would buy a Rolleiflex 6 x 6 that enabled him to take on greater challenges. 1958 was the year the first public display of his drawings and paintings was made at Galería Lirolay and the following year the first exhibition of his photographs was held at Galería Galatea, both in Buenos Aires. Barcelona In 1976, after the military coup in Argentina and the imposition of state terrorism, Humberto Rivas, who found violence intolerable, moved to Barcelona in the company of his family and thanks to the support of América Sánchez who was already living in the Catalan capital. His arrival in February 1976 had an impact on the city’s art circles, bringing together all those who hoped to advance creative photography, which at the time was marginalised from other artistic disciplines. In 1982 Rivas took part in the first edition of Barcelona’s Photographic Spring festival, designed to draw attention to a medium that was not yet on an equal footing with other contemporary art disciplines. His creative work ran parallel to his pedagogical commitments that brought him into contact with younger generations of photographers who were encouraged by his oeuvre and his experience, considering him a strict yet receptive spirit, a master of ‘pure’ photography, as a result of which a number of creative and dynamic groups would soon emerge. Rivas continued his career as a portraitist in Barcelona, and was commissioned to produce portraits of famous Catalan figures such as Joan Miró, Josep Tarradellas, Federica Montseny, Charlie Rivel, J. V. Foix, Salvador Espriu, Joan Brossa and Antoni Tàpies. I n 2006 the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) in Barcelona organised a retrospective exhibition of his oeuvre. Rivas’s photographs of the years 2000 to 2005 are essential works that emphasise the nuances of black and reveal his mastery of chiaroscuro. Essence engages with subtlety in his last photographs, some of which are reproduced in the catalogue of his last one-man show held in 2008, Iluminar. Humberto Rivas’s photographs form a part of important art collections in Spain and abroad and a number of books have been published on his work. In 1997 Barcelona City Council awarded him the City of Barcelona Plastic Arts Prize; in 1998 he received the National Photography Award from the Spanish Ministry of Culture; in 1999 he was distinguished in Argentina with the Konex Prize; and in 2009 Barcelona City Council granted him the Gold Medal for Artistic Merit. Humberto Rivas died on 6 November 2009 in Barcelona.