Josep M. Subirachs

 (Barcelona, March 11th 1927 – idem, April 7th 2014)

Spanish sculptor, painter, engraver, stage designer and art critic.

A multifaceted artist, Subirachs stood out especially in sculpture, but also in other techniques such as painting, drawing, engraving, posters, tapestry, book illustration, jewelery design and the minting of medals.

Subirachs could often be seen at Hotel Estela Barcelona in Sitges, largely because of his friendship with the hotel’s owners. Today the hotel has the world’s largest private collection of the artist’s works, including sculpture, painting, drawing, tapestry, graphic work and a bibliophile edition. Some of these works were created in situ, such as the «Suite of Love (Hab. 219)» or the «Escalera Estelar» in the hotel hall.

In 2020, the Hotel Estela, in collaboration with the Fundació Josep Puigmarti, published a book that displays the entire collection.

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Along his wide career, he went through different periods: mediterranean, expressionist, abstract, new figuration.

In his work, Subirachs synthesized technical mastery and the purity of materials and textures with the desire to communicate and express a symbolic and transcendental language, through the creation of his own universe of iconographic references.

For the sculptor, art is a way of claiming life and creation in front of death and destruction.

Undoubtedly, Subirachs’s opera magna was the sculptural decoration of the Passion Facade of the Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which he created between 1987 and 2009.

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