O caso Viéitez

Abstract

Virxilio Viéitez (Soutelo de Montes, 1930-2008) was a professional rural-based photographer who, after a period in Aragon and Catalonia, returned to his home village and worked locally. Though he was at his most active between the late 1950s and the 1960s, he continued working through to the 1980s.
While his biographical profile may be similar to that of other professional photographers of the time, Viéitez presents a somewhat unique case in that his work was reappraised in the 1990s, though such reappraisal was not an unknown occurrence in the international arena. It was then that his work was discovered as “art” and that the photographer came to be regarded as an “author” (artist). The process of legitimisation that followed can be described as dramatic, both in terms of his presence at major exhibitions and in the art market.