Born in 1919 in Barcelona, Joan Brossa was interested in Catalan writers from an early age through his father’s library, thus approaching authors such as Jacint Verdaguer, Àngel Guimerà or Josep Maria de Sagarra. His firsts writing date from Spanish Civil War, although his beginnings are established on the forties, close to a Josep Vicenç Foix, Joan Miró and Joan Prats. In this decade he participated in the foundation of different artistic magazines, like Algol in 1947 or Dau al Set in 1948. Through the latter he met the poet João Cabral de Melo, with whom he established a great friendship during the 50s, and the one in charge of introducing him to Marxism and the need for the artist to commit to society. He matches and knows a lot of artists, like Eduardo Chillida, Antonio Saura or Joan Vila Casas, but his work focuses on poetry and theatre.

The 1960s took a step forward in his work, as various theatrical works were premiered, but he also experimented with other languages such as the object and the short film. Even so, the sixties stand out for the beginning of visual poetry with the publication of Quadern de poemes in 1969, a representative Brossa’s work and in relation to the bond established with artists since the fifties. But his artistic recognition did not arrive until the 70s, when some of his subject poems were presented in a collective exhibition in Barcelona and his poems began to be published in a normalized way after Franco’s death. From this moment his figure was linked to Catalan avant-garde artists such as Jaume Xifra or Francesc Abad. It was the 80s and 90s that finally took him abroad with his visual poetry and object poems, exhibiting in numerous exhibitions. Stand out, among others, his individual exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats, or Joan Brossa o les paraules són les coses at Fundació Joan Miró in 1986.

His work has been exhibited in different galleries and museums, especially at the end of the eighties, around cities like New York, Amsterdam, Göteborg, Santiago de Chile or Prague among others. Since 2000 his legacy is managed by Fundació Joan Brossa, but since 2012 this one is kept in MACBA.