Eduard Bigas evokes Josep Pla

In 1923, as a correspondent in Berlin for the newspaper La Publicitat , Josep Pla reported to the Catalan public the European scene of the post-World War II period. From several countries, in those years Plan wrote the chronicle of the reality of the moment, marked by runaway inflation, growing tension and the rise of populism that would end up triggering the coming to power of various fascisms in the following decade.

A century later, the painter and draftsman Eduard Bigas, another renowned Palafrugell native now 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 he sees unapologetically refers to the work of Pla: inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the revival and rise of populism and the extreme right...

The exhibition of the Josep Pla Foundation, which can be visited until January 4, 2024, offers a series of pieces by Eduard Bigas created specifically for this exhibition in which the reading of Josep Pla's work resonates and which are structured from various spaces that have marked his life trajectory and which illustrate the cosmopolitan profile that unites the two authors.

From Palafrugell, with which both Bigas and Pla present an indissoluble link, the exhibition begins a journey through London, Russia and Berlin, places chosen by Bigas to evoke Pla's work: the author of El quadern gris there he worked as a correspondent and wrote some of his works there, and Eduard Bigas, through his own experience and his impressions, updates the planian look through various techniques. Thus, mostly ink drawings on tea-stained papers and watercolors are shown.

Based on these coincidences, but from the diversity of forms of 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.