A textile worker from Cabrils, a small town on the Maresme province, Josefa Tolrà's life was marked by the death of her two sons. Overcome by grief, she began to connect with spiritualism and her inner voices, which linked her to cosmic energy. Following the advice of a spiritualist friend, she let herself be guided by the voices, which she captured in drawings and writings, an activity she would never abandon. In notebooks, large and small drawing sheets and other materials, she drew with pens, pencils and markers and also did embroidery, creating her own particular visual universe. Tolrà's work is composed of multiple elements such as spirals, circles and tiny lines that narrate biblical subjects, folklore scenes, historical characters and feminine figures from the esoteric world. Although artists such as Joan Brossa, Antoni Tàpies, Modest Cuixart and Magda Bolumar appreciated Tolrà's work (Brossa even visited her at home a few times), it was not until around 2010, thanks to the research studies of Pilar Bonet Julve and Sandra Martínez Pascual, that the work of this medium was fully valued and linked to the work of other artist mediums from Art Brut or Outsider Art, such as Madge Gill and Jeanne Tripier.

Tolrà's first exhibition while still alive was at Sala Gaspar, Barcelona (1956). Posthumously, she had solo exhibitions at Can Palauet, Mataró (2013), Institut d'Estudis Illerdencs, Lleida (2014), Tinglado, Tarragona (2016), and Fundació Joan Brossa, Barcelona (2020). Her work is included in the collections of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; LaM – Lille Métropole Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France; and MACBA, Barcelona.