Trivia

Horacio Coppola was an Argentine photographer and filmmaker. He was the author of the photographs that appeared in the first edition of "Evaristo Carriego" (1930) by Jorge Luis Borges.

He was one of the pioneers photographers from Argentina and a key figure in Modernism.

In 2009 the Galería Jorge Mara-La Ruche presented the exhibition "Horacio Coppola. Los Viajes", never before seen photographs taken between 1931 and 1935 on his travels through Europe and Brazil. The exhibition traveled to the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. A comprehensive catalog which accompanied the exhibition was published.

Coppola was the author of the photographs that appeared in the first edition of "Evaristo Carriego" (biography) (1930) by Jorge Luis Borges.

He met his future wife ( the photographer Grete Stern) in Germany.

He was about 20 when he began taking photographs.

He and his wife went back to Argentina in 1936.

He was named "Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires" and at 100 had a retrospective exhibit at the Malba Museum in Buenos Aires.

He studied in the Bauhaus ( a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 ) during the thirties with the famous photographer, mathemathician and philosopher Walter Peterhans who run the Photography Department at the Bauhaus.

In London, he took portraits of famous artists, and worked on a book about Mesopotamian artifacts in the Louvre and the British Museum.

In 1936 he was commissioned to photograph Buenos Aires for its 400th anniversary, and produced streetscapes that captured the romance, vitality and squalor of a great city.

Coppola was born in Buenos Aires, the youngest of 10 children. His parents, Italian immigrants, were well off, and he studied art, music, law and languages.

He traveled to Europe in the 1920s and '30s. Photography was coming into its own as an art form, with pictures being shot from odd angles and cropped for effect.

He and Grete Stern had a daughter, Silvia, and a son, Andres. They later divorced. In 1959, Coppola married Raquel Palomeque, a pianist.

Inquisitive and attentive, in 1928 Horacio attended 10 conferences given by Le Corbusier, inspiration "basis for his future photographs" of Buenos Aires. Horacio assimilated from the Swiss photographic artist his passion for forms, the transformation of the concept of architecture, and its relationship to the urban space.