Joan Brossa

JOAN BROSSA (Barcelona, 1919 - 1998).
Untitled, 1975.
Stone cardboard, enamel and metal on wood.
Hand signed.
Measurements: 24 x 37 x 31 cm.

Joan Brossa's hat with key is an interesting concept within his visual poetry. It is a way of playing with words and reality, where the key, as an element of access, becomes a metaphor for language; the hat, as an object of use, a space for creation and reflection. In Brossa's context, the "key" is not only a physical object, but a symbol of the opening to the imagination and the possibility of exploring different realities through language and visual poetry.

Brossa was a poet for whom there were no distinctions of genre (literary, scenic, visual, objectual...) He was co-founder of "Dau al Set" together with Ponç, Tàpies, Ciuxart and Tharrats, and throughout his career he received the Lletra d'Or, City of Barcelona, the UNESCO Picasso Medal, the National Plastic Arts Award, the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts and the National Theater Award from the Generalitat. His visual poetry and his posters constitute the best known part of his work, to the point that in this field Brossa became a world reference. From the seventies onwards he manipulated objects to deepen their meaning, or to represent the bare concept, through everyday objects and poems. His first object, "Escorça", a true "objet trouvé", dates from 1943. And 1951 is the first object made expressly, from the association of two distant realities (in this case a hammer and a letter composed of two others). But it is from 1959 that the poet intensifies his visual research with the "Suites de poésie visuelle" (Suites of visual poetry). It will be from the exhibition at the Fundació Miró in Barcelona in 1986, "Joan Brossa o les paraules són les cosas", and the anthology at the Reina Sofia in 1991, when the poet begins to be recognized in the country and around the world. This allowed him to carry out a series of more complex projects, which were translated into installations and what he called corporeal poems, or interventions in urban spaces.