Jaume Plensa

JAUME PLENSA (Barcelona, 1955).
“Domestic Propensities,” 2002.
Lithograph, etching, and collage on Japanese paper. Edition 4/50.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Measurements: 62.5 x 47.5 cm.
“Domestic Propensities” is part of a series of five works created by Jaume Plensa in 2002, in which the artist reflects on the impulses, desires, and behaviors that shape the individual experience. The series consists of *Love of Home*, *Parental Love*, *Power of Will*, *Verbal Memory*, and *Moral and Religious Sentiments*. In these works, Plensa combines the depiction of a human eye with words and expressions related to different dimensions of behavior and consciousness. The gaze thus takes on symbolic significance: it is simultaneously a physical organ, an instrument of perception, and a metaphor for introspection and individual consciousness. This relationship between the body and language constitutes one of the fundamental themes of Plensa’s work.
Jaume Plensa is one of the Spanish artists with the greatest international prominence in recent decades. He trained at the Escola de la Llotja and later at the Escola Superior de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi in Barcelona. Since the 1980s, Plensa has lived and worked in Berlin, Brussels, England, France, and the United States, as well as in Barcelona. He has also been actively involved in teaching: he was a professor at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and has regularly served as a visiting professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Notable among his institutional exhibitions are those held at the Fundació Joan Miró, the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Reina Sofía Museum, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and the MACBA.His major awards include the National Prize for Visual Arts of Catalonia, the National Prize for Visual Arts of Spain (2012), the Velázquez Prize for the Visual Arts (2013), and the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (2021).
His work is included in major international collections, including those of the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, MoMA in New York, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Art Institute of Chicago, and MACBA in Barcelona.