Joan Brossa Eina Morta [Dead Tool] 1988 © Fundacio Joan Brossa. DACS, London 2023

Biography

Born 1919
Died 1998
Nationalities Catalan
Spanish
Birth place Barcelona
Death place Barcelona

A prolific Catalan poet, Joan Brossa was born in Barcelona. He began to write poetry while fighting in the Spanish Civil War in 1938, and later became interested in the power of the unconscious. This led to his association with the Surrealist movement. A key figure in the Catalan avant-garde, Brossa was one of the founders of the art and literature review ‘Dau al Set’ and was a friend of Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies. Brossa regarded himself primarily as a poet, although his definition of poetry was broad, encompassing theatrical work, cinema, visual poetry, automatic writing, installations and object-poetry. His object-poems use everyday objects in a surprising manner, in the tradition of Dada and Surrealism.