Jaume Plensa

JAUME PLENSA (Barcelona, 1955)
"Atlas of imaginary anatomies", 1988.
Book-object / portfolio with nine original woodcuts.
Copy 31/44.
Paper designed by the artist and handmade by Toni Serdà (Crespià, Girona).
Wood engraving: Taller de Magí Baleta, Barcelona, Spain
Edition of 44 numbered copies (1/44-44/44) and 6 artist's proofs (P.A.)
Signed and numbered by the artist (justification and each one of the woodcuts).
Publisher: Alfredo Melgar Ediciones, Madrid
Measurements: 220 × 144 cm (total, unfolded).

"Atlas de anatomías imaginarias" is one of Plensa's most ambitious graphic works of the 1980s. The set brings together nine woodcuts of great formal strength in which the artist builds a symbolic vocabulary from body fragments transformed into autonomous signs.

The woodcut technique reinforces the forcefulness of the black and the simplification of the forms, giving the images an archaic and almost totemic character. The handmade paper, designed by the artist himself, accentuates the materiality of the whole and underlines its condition as an integral artistic object.

The title alludes to an anatomical treatise, but far from a scientific approach, Plensa proposes an imaginary cartography of the body, where organ, symbol and architecture merge. Published in a very small print run and signed individually, the portfolio is situated on the border between book, engraving and mural sculpture, anticipating one of the fundamental lines of his later career: the body understood as a poetic and structural territory.

Jaume Plensa has had an extensive international career, with outstanding exhibitions such as the retrospective held at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2000.

He has received important awards, among them the National Prize of Plastic Arts of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Medal of Knight of Arts and Letters of the French Ministry of Culture. His work is part of important international collections and museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and the MACBA in Barcelona.