Joan Barbarà

JOAN BARBARÀ I GÓMEZ (Barcelona, 1927-2014).
"El Liceu quemado".
Etching, copy 5/7.
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 100 x 200 cm.

In this engraving, in which Joan Barbarà evokes the great fire of the Liceu theater in Barcelona (January 1994), we can observe the excellent handling of a single ink, providing the black with subtle shades that give the ruin a romantic and almost pictorial quality.

Engraver and painter, Joan Barbarà was a member of the Miró Foundation in Palma de Mallorca, and was also an advisor to the Picasso-Raventós Foundation, Ediciones Estampe de arte gráfico and Graphosverlag in Switzerland. He held his first exhibition in Barcelona in 1956, and later showed his work also abroad, in Paris and Bologna. In 1954 he opened his own workshop, from which he would collaborate as a printmaker with prominent artists of the contemporary European avant-garde, including Masson, Rouault, Villon, Kokoschka, Fontana, Vasarely, Miró, Picasso and Tàpies, among others. The year of his death, the Museu de Montserrat dedicated an extensive retrospective to him.