Isabel Steva 'Colita', a leading figure in the field of photojournalism, linked to teaching and the cultural life of EINA, died on Sunday 31 December at the age of 83.
Self-taught, she began her career in the early 1960s, and developed her technique with photographers such as Oriol Maspons, Francesc Català-Roca, Leopoldo Pomés and Xavier Miserachs.
Photography classes were introduced at EINA by Xavier Miserachs, founder and teacher of the school until 1973. This subject, to which EINA gave a preferential place as a means of artistic expression, when it was still a medium excluded from the sphere of fine arts or university teaching, was taught from the 1970s onwards by other teachers such as Paco Llobet (1970-1983), a pupil of the first class, and Manel Esclusa (from 1978 to the present day), who would be accompanied by other names such as Colita, Humberto Rivas, Toni Catany, Oukalele, Jordi Sarrà, Antonio Molinero and Pere Llunas in seminars, courses and workshops.
Colita was the great portraitist of Bocaccio, the epicentre of the gauche divine, but she also captured the transformation of Barcelona during the Franco regime and the transition with a renewed, vindictive and feminist gaze. He immortalised spaces in the city, both in high society and in the shantytowns of the shantytowns, and his camera captured the likes of Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Losa, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Orson Welles, Rafael Alberti, Ana María Matute, Carmen Amaya, Antonio Gades, Juan Manuel Serrat, Bella Dorita and the brothers Terenci and Ana María Moix.
The Board of Trustees and the entire EINA community express our condolences to his family and friends, and our heartfelt appreciation for his commitment to the world of culture.
Cover photo: Oriol Maspons