Jaume Plensa

JAUME PLENSA (Barcelona, 1955)
“Song of Songs V.”
Lithograph on embossed paper. Edition 19/30.
The paper has slight ripples.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Measurements: 100 x 65 cm.
The Song of Songs series within Jaume Plensa’s graphic work is part of a line of inquiry in which the artist translates some of the essential concerns of his sculptural practice into print: the relationship between body, word, memory, and space. Although it is not a single, isolated piece but rather a collection of editions and variations, this series is part of a period in which Plensa began to consolidate a poetic language based on the materialization of the intangible.
In *Song of Songs V*, one of the best-known versions, Plensa treats the print as a space of tension between the visible and the immaterial, where the image does not seek to represent literally, but rather to suggest states of perception and experience. The series takes the Song of Songs as its conceptual reference—a biblical text rich in symbolism and poetry, traditionally associated with love, union, and transcendence. This literary reference aligns with the artist’s interest in poetic texts as a source of visual and emotional structure.
Formally, these works are typically characterized by a minimalist and conceptual aesthetic, in which repetition, the superimposition of signs, and the presence of refined graphic structures create an almost meditative effect. In Plensa’s work, words and signs function not merely as visual elements, but as symbolic “bodies” that occupy and transform space—an idea that runs through his entire body of graphic and sculptural work.
The series also relates to his broader exploration of human identity and inner life, recurring themes in his career. As in later installations where he incorporates letters, voices, or bodily sounds, in *Song of Songs* the image becomes a field of resonance between the physical and the spiritual, between the individual and the collective.