I did not have a good start with Jaume Plensa. In October 1990, Carles Tach̩ phoned me, a friendly and very active Barcelona gallery owner who has done a lot for the artistic vitality of this city and to whom all the tributes and recognitions are still due. Tach̩ explained to me that this young but already well-known artist was exhibiting a dozen large-format drawings, inviting me to interview him for La Vanguardia. I went to Consell de Cent street and in his room I saw the works, which evoked essential shapes Рspheres, grids, ovals Рand they quite disconcerted me. Tach̩ introduced me to Plensa and I asked him what you should never ask an artist: what did he want to express?
He observed to me that what he had wanted to express was exactly what he had expressed. Sensible answer but that did not give much room for conversation. I verified that a good harmony between us had not been generated, and we decided to leave the meeting there. Over time I have regretted several times for not having known how to save that non-interview.
Over time, too, I have been able to familiarize myself with his work, which usually amazes me but no longer puzzles me. I saw it in 1996 at the Fundación Miró, later at the Senda gallery, in Chicago, in New York… I saw how Plensa was cementing a personal and recognizable, complex and poetic world of great visual impact. And in the documentaries that have been dedicated to him, I observed that capacity for team leadership that allows him to take on large-tonnage orders. Plensa is today, deservedly, the living Catalan plastic artist with the greatest projection.
While that projection grew, in his city it did not reach a corresponding echo. While different metropolises of the world, including Madrid, hosted their great creations in public spaces, in Barcelona we limited ourselves to a few first-time pieces in the Born, a set in Nou Barris that was dispersed, a few minor works in various entities and, after many efforts, a medium-sized sculpture in front of the Palau de la Musica. The retrospective that Macba dedicated to him in 2019 was carried out incomprehensibly, or not so much, in a rather discreet key. Negotiations for a large-scale urban piece in the time of Xavier TrÃas did not bear fruit.
A certain popular outcry and a lot of insistence, in which this newspaper has played a role, has been necessary for the trend to turn around. And finally, 2022-2023 is being the Plensa year in Barcelona. He has presented the Constel.lacions doors for the Liceu and his stage direction and costumes for the opera Macbeth, not by chance because the artist has already illustrated Shakespeare’s theater in an edition of Galaxia Gutenberg. That Macbeth provided a mesmerizing atmosphere creation in a show not to be forgotten; and we must congratulate VÃctor GarcÃa de Gomar for commissioning it.
And as a culmination, the exhibition Jaume Plensa. Poetry of silence, which occupies the noble floor of La Pedrera and distributes another ten sculptures throughout the building. The one located in front of the entrance, Flora, a large and very beautiful white head, dialogues wonderfully with the sinuous Gaudinian façade. I think it would be wise to leave it definitively and for it to become an icon on Passeig de Grà cia; I think the arrangement of the Day-Night room on the roof is less appropriate, which from the street is dwarfed by GaudÒs chimneys.
Overall, the excellent exhibition curated by Javier Molins allows us to go from the most conceptual to the most figurative stages of the artist, from his poetics of letters to his work on the figure and the human face, the latter often demanding silence: a trademark of the house with universal appeal because from the portraits of El Fayum, the enigma of existence is traced in the face. It has been suggested in this regard that Plensa is repeated there; he could answer what Luis Marsans said when asked about his marvelous libraries. “I do not repeat myself, I insist.”
A video allows us to delve into his working methods, the use of dolls on which he fixes his metal profiles and the use of tracing paper “which is as if the drawing were nowhere to be found”.
A set of parallel activities at the Liceu, the Library of Catalonia, the Egyptian Museum, Esmuc and the Senda gallery from April to June will add a consistency that will no longer be able to escape Jaume Plensa’s Barcelona.