Poetry, Typography and Mass Communication
By Charlotte Stace
A new exhibition at La Virreina, ‘Poetry, Typography and Mass Communication’ explores the work of Catalan artist Josep Iglésias del Marquet.
Marquet was a painter, art critic, visual poet and journalist. He is a crucial figure in the understanding of Catalan poetry, and was a pioneer of mail art during his period as a university lecturer in Scotland and Canada in the 1960s.
After coming back to Barcelona, he participated in various collective exhibitions of experimental poetry and established the publishing house Lo Pardal with writer and poet Guillem Viladot. Throughout the 1970s, he was active in creating art, producing a number of collages and visual poems that reflect two of his main interest areas: typography and mass communication. Situated on the cusp between art, journalism and poetry, Marquet was an inquisitive observer of the arts and new communication systems, while also being particularly knowledgeable about graphic arts and the history of books.