Joan Jordà

Painter, engraver and sculptor, Joan Jordà was born into a Catalan working-class family near Barcelona.

Joan Jordà is a child of exile, following the defeat of the Spanish Republic in 1939, aged 10, he arrived in France with his family and they were transferred to a camp in Grenoble. In 1945 the whole family finally settled in Toulouse where he remained all his life. He always refused to return to Spain. A painter, universal Catalan as he described himself, he devoted his life to painting and was officially invited by the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia to exhibit his work in Barcelona, at the Museo Pia Almoina in 2000.

When talking about his work, he says he wants it to be tragic but not sad.

His first personal exhibition in 1976 marked the beginning of a long commitment to denouncing violence and the aberrations of totalitarian powers. “Bombardments", “Meninas", “Majas", “Bullfighting", “Cutthrowers", “Swimmers", so many themes which will mark his life as an artist, without forgetting the works around the “Retirada", including the memorial The Exodus of the Republicans from Spain, bronze sculpture erected in the heart of Toulouse.