Joan Ponç

JOAN PONÇ BONET (Barcelona, 1927 – Saint-Paul, France, 1984).
El Quijote Suite, 1979.
Print, number 147/200.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Measurements: 42 x 26 cm (print); 63 x 45 cm (paper).
A painter and draftsman, he trained in Barcelona at Ramón Rogent’s studio and at the Academy of Plastic Arts under Ángel López-Obrero. After working as a painter and draftsman in relative obscurity, he held his first solo exhibition in 1946 at the Galería Arte in Bilbao, which marked his definitive establishment on the national art scene. In 1948, along with Tharrats, Puig, Cuixart, Tàpies, and Brossa, among others, he founded the avant-garde group Dau al Set. Selected by Eugenio D’Ors, he participated in the Salón de los Once in Madrid in 1951 and 1952. In 1952, he participated in the Hispano-American Biennial, and the following year he spent some time in Paris, where he met Joan Miró and managed to exhibit at the Musée de la Villa. On Miró’s recommendation, Ponç gained access to Brazilian artistic circles and settled in São Paulo from 1953 to 1962. In 1954, the year Dau al Set disbanded, he held an exhibition at the city’s Museum of Modern Art, which was so successful that the museum acquired his entire body of work. In Brazil, he explored the equatorial rainforests, where he was impressed by the wildlife—especially the insects—which he incorporated into his imagery. In 1955, he founded the Taüll group with Marc Aleu, Modest Cuixart, Jaume Guinovart, Jaume Muxart, Mercadé, Tàpies, and Tharrats. After returning to Catalonia due to illness, as a fully established artist he held exhibitions in New York, Rio de Janeiro, Bonn, Paris, Frankfurt, Geneva, Antibes, and various Spanish cities. In 1965, he won the International Grand Prize for Drawing at the São Paulo Biennial. Ponç’s paintings present phantasmagorical images that are at once sorrowful and tormented, in which the subconscious takes center stage. For the painter, art is nothing more than an introduction to the mystery and secrets held within the spirit. More of a draftsman than a painter, his work is extremely detailed and meticulous. Ponç’s body of work can be divided into six periods: the Dau al Set period (1947), the Brazilian period (1958), the metaphysical-geometric period (1969), the period of metaphysical figures (1970), the Acupintura period (1971), and a final period of synthesis (1972). In his work, Ponç reveals himself as a sorcerer-artist who conceives of art as magic, as an extraordinary power, a spell, something supernatural. But the great Catalan master was not only that; his art is also an exploration of the negative, an attraction to the perverse and the diabolical, a reflection of a universe teeming with monstrous and malevolent beings, with satanic and treacherous spirits—a reflection of the artist’s fascination with evil.