Josep Maria Subirachs

Barcelona, 1927

Born into a working class family in the Barcelona district of Poblenou, the precarious economic situation suffered during the post-war period forced him to renounce studying architecture. From 1942 to 1947 he worked as an apprentice under the sculptor Enric Monjo at his workshop, acquiring technical skills. But the person who taught him most profoundly was Enric Casanovas.

The expressionist aspect of Subirachs’ works is more formal than conceptual and can be found, above all, in the typically distorted angular bodies and in the treatment of textures, when he incorporates grattage, refraining from leaving surfaces smooth, making them rough, jagged, coarse, in order to accentuate the expressive capacity of the material.

In 1950 Subirachs founded, alongside the sculptors Francesc Torres Monsó and Martí Sabé and the painters Esther Boix, Ricard Creus and Joaquim Datzira, the “Postectura” group, which presented itself with an exhibition and a manifest at the Galeries Laietanes in Barcelona. The following year the Circle Maillol of the French Institute of Barcelona awarded him a scholarship to extend his studies in Paris, where he came into contact with the...