Joan Brossa

Roda, 1969 (1989)

Wheel, 1969 (1989)

Object, 114 x 114 x 30 cm

I met Manel Viñas thanks to Dr Obiols [...]. Lately he’s been helping me realise all the objects that I imagine; not just looking for them, which isn’t easy, because often they’re special and of a specific period, hard to find, but also assembling them in the industrial workshop he owns. He does it well and with great enthusiasm. For example, it was more complicated than you’d think to commission the construction of a cart wheel that was square! After finding a craftsman who agreed to build a traditional wheel, as in the old days, when we specified it should not be round, but square, he thought we were completely mad. But Viñas convinced him, and it was built with absolute accuracy.

Permanyer, Lluís: Brossa x Brossa: records. Barcelona: La Campana, 1999, pp. 169–170. [Memoirs of Joan Brossa dictated to Lluís Permanyer]

The most degrading poverty is the lack of imagination!

How often has it proved a challenge to find an object that, in your imagination, had already become a poem?

That clock for the Poliorama, for example. We had to find a watchmaker who would make the mechanism work backwards: the man laughed because he couldn’t see the use of such a contraption! And to build the machinery, it was hard to convince a craftsman who was used to working on normal clocks.

Is it lack of education that makes people see the objects you use for visual poetry as junk?

It’s a problem of sensibility! You can do poetry with anything, but only your creative skills will give it validity.

Is everything in life susceptible to being transformed into poetry?

Everything! Poetry is everywhere. However, there is an antenna that allows you to connect the two worlds and turn them into one.

Pujolar, Quim, ‘Joan Brossa’, Avui (19 August 1990), pp. 4–5

Original title:: Roda
Registration number:: 4959
Artist:: Brossa, Joan
Date created:: 1969 (1989)
Date acquired:: 2011
Fonds:: MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium
Object type:: Object
Media:: Enamel, metal and wood
Dimensions:: 114 x 114 x 30 cm (height x width x depth)
Edition number:: Ed. S/N d'edició de 3
Credits:: MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium. Joan Brossa Fund. Long-term loan of Fundació Joan Brossa
It has accessibility resources:: No

The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.

For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.

If you need a high resolution image of the work, you must submit an image loan request.

Roda, 1969 (1989)

Technical details

Other works by Joan Brossa