Joan Ponç: a visionary in days of visions

Joan Ponç’s art is associated with a long illness and many hours spent in hospital. On his visits for medical treatment, he took with him some boxes, with a hard base that could be used as a support, watercolour paints and drawing implements. And he painted. Visionary beings, candle-like heads, impossible actions and obsessive configurations until he had painted all 424 boxes. As he himself told Arnau Puig in 1976: ‘Once you manage to eliminate the self, everything else just happens. When you rise above the personal level, you become part of the general level and this larger universe brings you an inexhaustible energy.’