Joan Ponç

JOAN PONÇ (Barcelona, 1927 – Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, 1984).
“Hallucinations I: Carnival,” 1947.
Ink and gouache on paper.
Certificate of authenticity included.
Published in: Mordechai Omer, *Universe and Magic of Joan Ponç*, Edicions Polígrafa, Barcelona, 1972, ill. 65.
Online catalog raisonné of the Associació Joan Ponç: no. 1649.
Measurements: 43 x 56 cm; 68 x 80 cm (framed).

The work is part of Joan Ponç’s early body of work, created at a decisive moment in his career, shortly before the founding of Dau al Set. Dated 1947, it belongs to the world of *Al·lucinacions*, a series in which the artist unfolds a visionary imagination, populated by symbols, hybrid creatures, plant forms, fantastical objects, and ritual-like presences.

The composition is organized as a constellation of figures suspended above the paper, without a conventional narrative hierarchy. The forms, with their vivid colors and vibrant contours, seem to float in a mental space, somewhere between the playful and the unsettling. Ponç combines the freshness of his drawing with a powerful symbolic capacity: each element functions as an autonomous sign, but also as part of an enigmatic scene, reminiscent of dreams, magic, and hallucinations.

Some of the essential traits of his artistic language are already evident in this work: imaginative freedom, a penchant for the fantastic, a dynamic line, and the construction of unique worlds far removed from academic realism. Its experimental and visionary nature places it within the context of the postwar Catalan artistic renewal, in which Ponç played a central role.

Joan Ponç was one of the key figures of the postwar Catalan avant-garde. In 1948, together with Joan Brossa, Antoni Tàpies, Modest Cuixart, Arnau Puig, and Joan-Josep Tharrats, he founded the Dau al Set group, which was pivotal in the revival of avant-garde artistic languages in postwar Spain. His work, rooted in the magical, dreamlike, and surreal, always maintained a strong aesthetic independence. It is represented in major collections and institutions, including the MACBA in Barcelona, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.