Brossa, Joan

JOAN BROSSA BIOGRAPHY

(Barcelona, 1919 - Barcelona, 1998)

Joan Brossa is considered one of the most avant-garde and prolific artists of contemporary art and literature in Spain. The only son of an engraver, his father passed on to him his passion for theater and the performing arts from his childhood. However, the death of his father brought him under the influence of his mother's traditional and conservative family, which provided him with a classical education. Brossa, who always despised schools, used to say: "important things are learned, but not taught".

With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, at the age of 17, he was mobilized by the Republican army and transferred to the Lleida front. It was in this context that he began his literary career, writing biographical notes, impressions of the front and texts to encourage his comrades, which years later would be compiled in the book Trenta División (1950). Once the war was over, he had to do military service, but, once completed, Brossa was fully integrated into the avant-garde intelligentsia of the time.

Strongly influenced by Freud, he began to work with free associations of images and created a work marked by surrealism, focused on the everyday absurd and with a clear political, vindictive and progressive approach. He was one of the founders of the Dau al Set group, together with Antoni Tàpies, Cuixart, Tharrats, Ponç and Arnau Puig.

Initially linked to neo-surrealism, he continued to explore reality and began to experiment with visual poetry from the 1960s onwards. This period was crucial for Brossa, as he began collaborations with artists of the stature of Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies, developing a playful and participatory approach to poetry. In this way, he managed to free poetry from its textual limitations to turn it into a form of unlimited symbolic expression, transforming it into sculpture, posters or actions.

During the Spanish Transition, Brossa resumed his political poetry, but over time democratic normalization led him more and more towards the plastic arts. In the years that followed, Brossa's work gradually shifted from literature to experimental art. An exhibition at the Miró Foundation in Barcelona (1986) was a turning point, marking a new stage of creative fecundity and popular acceptance. His installations and poems in the form of sculptures began to occupy the public space: Transitable Visual Poem at the Vall d'Hebron Velodrome, Barcino in the Cathedral Square and Antifaç on Barcelona's Rambla.

The last years of his life were those of greatest recognition. His contribution to theater, cinema, poetry and plastic art was widely recognized by the public and the Spanish artistic world. Today, Joan Brossa's work is considered one of the most significant of the avant-garde in Spain.