The Palau Foundation inaugurates "European resonances: Eduard Bigas evokes Josep Pla"

The Josep Pla Foundation inaugurates on June 30 the European Resonances: Eduard Bigas evokes Josep Pla exhibition, which can be visited until January 4, 2024.

The exhibition shows a series of pieces by Eduard Bigas inspired by the reading of Josep Pla's work and created specifically for this exhibition, which are structured from various spaces that have marked his life trajectory and that il· they reflect the cosmopolitan profile that unites the two authors.

In 1923, as a correspondent in Berlin for the newspaper La Publicitat, Josep Pla told the Catalan public how the European scene of the post-World War II period looked. During his stays in several countries - France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia -, Plan would write the chronicle of the reality of the moment, marked by runaway inflation, growing tension and the rise of populism, which would end up triggering the arrival of various fascisms in power the following decade.

A century later, the painter and draftsman Eduard Bigas, another Palafrugell native settled in Berlin who, like Josep Pla, has traveled throughout much of Europe without ever abandoning ties with his country, contemplates the European scene and notes that everything what he sees inexcusably reminds him of Pla's work: inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the revival and rise of populism and the extreme right...

From Palafrugell, where both Bigas and Pla feel rooted, the exhibition begins a journey through several European territories: London, Russia, Berlin are the places chosen by Bigas to evoke the work of Pla: the author of El quadern gris worked as a correspondent there and wrote some of his works there, and Eduard Bigas, through his own experience and impressions, updates the plain view to reflect the present situation through artistic expression. Both look at the reality around them, and convey their impressions: one through the pencil and brush, the other with the pen.

Based on these coincidences, but from the diversity of forms of artistic expression, the two authors establish a conversation a hundred years apart. Bringing plastic arts and literature into dialogue, Eduard Bigas is inspired by the reality reflected by Pla's words to project his view on the present: the result is a series of pieces that invite us to reread the history of a century ago and, at the same time, they enlighten us in the present moment. Throughout 2023, in a collective initiative coordinated by bonart in which several cultural facilities participate, exhibitions in tribute to his work have been scheduled in his hometown, which allow us to appreciate the variety and versatility of the work by Eduard Bigas.