JOSEP MARIA SUBIRACHS SITJAR Spanish painter

Heir of the Mediterranean sculpture of Maillol, owing to the knowledge obtained in the workshop of Enric Casanovas, Joseph Maria Subirachs covers different aesthetics that vary from the classicism to the noucentist, from the informalism to the expressionism, and from the abstraction to the neo-figurative art, that places him in the centre of the Catalan avant-garde of the 50s and 60s. After his first exhibition in the Casa del Llibre (Book house) in Barcelona (1948), he is granted with a scholarship by the French Institute, which allows him to work in France and Belgium and get to know these countries.

Integrated in the artistic environment of Europe, he realizes in a key date, 1957, the first abstract work, placed in a public street in Barcelona. His move to figurative art, always with a mythological, classical, Jewish or Christian sense, starts with the order to work on the facade and the doors of the Virgen del Camino Sanctuary in Leon (1959), afterwards he will work on the monument to Narcías Monturiol (1963), the facade of the Town Hill of Barcelona (1969), the facade la Pasión de la Sagrada Familia (Passion of the Sacred Family) (1986), the monument to Francesco Macià, etc.