Josep Maria Rovira-Brull

JOSEP MARIA ROVIRA-BRULL (Barcelona, 1926 – Mataró, 2000).
“The Burial of the Sardine.”
Painting on wood.
Signed in the upper left corner.
Measurements: 50 x 65 cm.

Representative of Rovira-Brull’s neo-symbolist, surrealist, and satirical universe, the work transforms the traditional celebration of the burial of the sardine into a grotesque scene laden with allusions to religion, death, and social transgression. The festival, linked to the end of Carnival and the beginning of Lent, is a time of subversion of norms and burlesque criticism of authority—aspects particularly in line with the artist’s imagination.

The composition is dominated by a skeletal figure dressed in red holding a pinwheel from which sardines hang. Two figures in mourning attire, wearing top hats, take part in this peculiar ceremony. The suspended fish, the masks, and the distorted anatomies create a deliberately absurd scene in which the festive and the macabre coexist naturally. The stylization of the figures, the theatrical nature of their gestures, and the combination of recognizable elements in unexpected pairings are recurring features of his figurative language.

Josep Maria Rovira-Brull was a singular figure in the second wave of the Catalan avant-garde, whose career spanned painting, sculpture, printmaking, illustration, and graphic design. In 1957, he founded the Sílex Group alongside artists such as Eduard Alcoy, Joan Hernández Pijuan, and Carles Planell, and later developed a neo-symbolist style with a strong critical and poetic dimension. Closely tied to Mataró, he actively participated in the city’s cultural life and is the creator of the monumental *Laia l’Arquera*, which has become one of the city’s emblems.