Barcino

Barcino was the Roman name for Barcelona. It seems to come from an Iberian village called Barkeno, which is mentioned in some Iberian drachmas from the 2nd century BC. This form evolved into the Latin Barcino when the city was founded as a Roman colony in the 1st century BC with the name of Colonia Iulia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino.

The sculpture is located in Plaza Nueva, facing the Bisbal Gate, the ancient Praetorian Gate of the city's Roman wall, urbanized in 1355 after the demolition of several houses to channel the waters of the Collserola mountain range to the Plaza de San Jaime. From here, the avenue of the Cathedral starts, where the Cathedral of Barcelona is located. It was during the reform of this avenue in 1991, carried out by architects Màrius Quintana and Montserrat Periel, when the placement of this sculpture was devised and the project was commissioned to Brossa. It was made at the Morral Foundry in Sabadell and inaugurated on April 24, 1994.

The work is conceived as a "corporeal ideogram." It is composed of seven letters that form the name Barcino, six of them in bronze and one in aluminum (the N), placed on the pavement of the square diagonally to the layout of the ancient Roman road. Each letter has an individualized solution: the B has the shape of other works in the Brossa production, where it is common as the initial of his surname; the A has a pyramid shape and has a grave accent on its upper part according to the Catalan version of the name, Bàrcino; the R has the shape of typewritten typography; the C presents a crescent moon shape; the I is marked in bas-relief inside a rectangle; the N has a sailboat shape and indicates the north; and the O has a sun drawn on it, in reference to the Mediterranean.

Joan Brossa i Cuervo (1919-1998) was a multifaceted artist and poet who wrote in the Catalan language, and was difficult to classify. In his early years, he was associated with surrealism and was a part of the group Dau al Set, along with Antoni Tàpies, Modest Cuixart, Joan Josep Tharrats, Joan Ponç, and Arnau Puig. This group, formed in the late 1940s, aimed to renew the artistic landscape of Catalonia and distance themselves from the official art promoted by the Francoist dictatorship, by approaching new international avant-garde movements. Until its dissolution in 1956, Dau al Set evolved from a certain magical surrealism towards more or less abstract informalism. Afterwards, Brossa continued his career alone, working especially on a concept that brought together his two great passions, poetry and art, through what he called "visual poems," works with a material support but that evoked an immaterial concept. Other works in this sense in the city of Barcelona were the "Visual Walkable Poem in Three Times: Birth, Road - with Pauses and Intonations - and Destruction," the "Llagost of the School of Building Surveyors," and the "Gymnast Letters of Rauric Street," as well as the decoration of the facade of the theater dedicated to his figure, the Espai Escènic Joan Brossa, on Allada-Vermell Street (1998). Other sculptures by Brossa in Barcelona are: The Mask (1991), and the Monument to the Book (1994).