Antoni Llena became known in the mid-sixties for pioneering ‘poor’ and ephemeral art in Catalonia. Between 1964 and 1969 he produced his first ephemeral sculptures made with shadows and paper, with boxes that had to be destroyed to see the work, and paintings made with talcum powder, among other basic materials. As the catalan art critic Alexandre Cirici wrote: ‘In 1968 […] he was making little sculptures that were scraps of paper, discoloured, cut or torn and pasted, sometimes folded into steps. He had three that were no more than three or four centimetres long at most. He said that he wanted to make a poor, ephemeral art, because poverty was what he had learned in real life. And weakness. These little statues were monuments of paper, weak, to the great men. Bronze and stone are inhuman materials that demand effort and money, and crush you. A monument of paper can be set at the edge of the grass in a park. It is better that the rain or the wind should carry it away. It is more human.’

WORKS IN THE COLLECTION BY ANTONI LLENA

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