Jaume Plensa through his relationship with Joan Brossa

three letters from the sculptor to the poet

Abstract

This study is part of a broader investigation into the relevance of literature in the art projects of the sculptor Jaume Plensa in the international public space, with special attention to the essential role that poetry plays for his sculpture in terms of identity and representation.

Thus, taking into account the pioneering role of the visual poet Joan Brossa in bringing poetry to the city in a lasting way with his urban interventions, we wanted to investigate here the brief but fundamental relationship that both artists maintained through three unpublished letters from the sculptor to the poet, written between September 1979 and November 1982.

From the deep affinity between the two artists that emerges from reading this correspondence, as well as the shared references to the political-cultural context of the Spanish Transition in which they were written, we will extract some of the most relevant ideological assumptions and creative constants in Plensa. Among these, the value given to Culture over politics for the progress of society stands out, and among these, the relationship that poetry and art have in Plensa with the unknown and its capacity, as Brossa said, to bring us closer to our origins and identity, as well as the presence of water as an image and integrating element in his discourse and artistic approach. Along with the proposed texts, we will also analyze in depth two early works by the artist that will allow us to concretize in aesthetic strategies the defining principles found in his letters to Brossa; all of this will lead to establishing important connections between the beginnings of his career and his later production, especially with some of the works that have placed him on the international scene of urban sculpture, which undoubtedly reveals an extraordinary coherence in the sculptor's career.

The current reading of these texts also highlights the relevance of Brossa's work and the relevance of Plensa's proposal, highlighting the commitment of both artists to two of the most essential values ​​for our society: the defence of difference and the recognition of a plural reality, essential to preserve the essence of public space as a place of relationship and central to the sculptor's interventions in the heart of our cities.