exhibition "European resonances: Eduard Bigas evokes Josep Pla"

In 1923, as a correspondent in Berlin for the newspaper La Publicitat, Josep Pla told the Catalan public how the post-World War II European scene looked. During his stays in several countries – France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia -, Plan would write the chronicle of the reality of the moment, marked by runaway inflation, growing tension and the rise of populism, which would end up triggering the arrival of various fascisms in power the following decade. A century later, the painter and draftsman Eduard Bigas, another Palafrugell resident settled in Berlin who, like Josep Pla, has traveled throughout much of Europe without ever abandoning ties with his country, contemplates the European scene and notes that everything what he sees inexcusably reminds him of Pla’s work: inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the revival and rise of populism and the extreme right… Based on these coincidences but from the diversity of forms of artistic expression, the two authors establish a conversation a hundred years apart. Bringing different disciplines into dialogue, Eduard Bigas is inspired by the reality reflected by Pla’s words to project his view on the present: the result is a series of pieces that invite us to reread the history of a century ago and, at the same time, they enlighten us in the present moment.



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