John London: Contextos de Joan Brossa

l'acció, la imatge i la paraula

The range covered by the Catalan artist and writer Joan Brossa (1919-1998) has created a problem for those attempting to assess and understand his work. While Brossa's visual work (above all his 'object poems') has come to international prominence in the last twenty years, with major exhibitions in Spain, Europe and Latin America, Brossa is also the author of over three hundred texts for performance (he called 'theatrical poetry') and thirty collections of written verse. Most of his written poems have had relatively little exposure and over seventy per cent of his plays remain unperformed. Brossa's films are rarely shown.

What accounts for this imbalance in popularity? How can all of Brossa's work be considered together? Can the reception of Brossa's work during the Francoist dictatorship (1939-75) and afterwards help us understand its intrinsic ideological context? Is a wider aesthetic and social background more important for appreciating the artist? Why does theatre remain the most neglected of Brossa's main genres? What function does the translation of Brossa's verbal language have in the interpretation of its impact?

This study, written in Catalan, is the first to consider all the genres within which Brossa was active. It includes forty illustrations, a bibliography and an index locorum.