Art Madrid'23 – Joan Brossa and his extensive legacy

 

 

Joan Brossa in his studio

 

 

 

Joan Brossa was born in Barcelona in 1919. He gave up his studies because of the Spanish Civil War, in which he took part in the Republican side. He developed his artistic practice in the 1940s, in Barcelona, in a social-political context marked by Franco’s dictatorship and the absence of avant-garde and innovative proposals. In 1947 he founded the ‘Dau al Set’ group, with Modest Cuixart, Joan Ponç, Arnau Puig, Antoni Tàpies and Joan-Josep Tharrats. In 1950s his poetry veered radically towards social commitment that continued in the sixties, coexisting with an interest in a more conceptual approach. He experimented intensively with visual poetry and object poems, genres that he would continue to practice for the rest of his life. He was influenced by Lettrism, visual, concrete, experimental and expanded poetry, and Fluxus, as well as by the poetry of artists such as Marcel Marien (1920-1993), Nicanor Parra (1914) and Ian Hamilton-Finlay (1925-2006).

 

 

 

Joan Brossa

 

 

 

Joan Brossa work consists on a very extensive production, where different artistic disciplines coexist. Up until his death, in 1998, his extensive production never ceased to develop new forms of expression. One year after the artist´s death, the Joan Brossa Foundation was set up to take on the task of cataloguing and preserving the Brossa’s personal archive, which includes the original manuscripts of his artistic and literary works, facsimiles, translations of literary works, correspondence, a range of pamphlets, invitations, posters, articles and press clippings, documents of his political and social activities, an assortment of photographs, administrative paperwork (invoices, receipts, accounts), etc. Joan Brossa’s library (formed by six thousand books and a similar number of magazines), as well as his personal archive and art collection were deposited with the MACBA Study Centre in 2012.

 

 

 

Joan Brossa

 

 


The exhibition, curated by Teresa Grandas and Pedro G. Romero, pursues to interrelate Brossa´s works with the practice of other artists. It will allow visitors to establish parallels and seek dialogues and tensions. It also aims to emphasise the performative aspects of Brossa’s poetic practice. It includes more than 60.000 pieces, most of them never shown before: documents, books, publications, posters, photographs and his well known visual poems.

 

Joan Brossa

 

 

 

Visitors will be able to approach the artist´s artworks, from his first publications to his latest visual investigations, including his work in the theatre, cinema, music and artistic actions, until next February 25.

 

 

 

Joan Brossa

 

 

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.