As a young man, Joan Brotat i Vilanova was conscripted to serve in the Lleva del Biberó and fought in the Battle of the Ebro as a stretcher bearer for the Republican side. His parents, artisan shoemakers in the Santa Caterina neighbourhood in Barcelona, had to close down their premises in the early post-Civil War years and they decided to open a picture framing business, where Joan worked. This led him to go on to study courses oriented towards the applied arts and he ended up getting into painting. After starting out in Informalism and experimenting with collage, Brotat then defined a very personal style, marked by a certain primitivism and clearly inspired by Catalan Romanesque art. Josep Maria de Sucre discovered his paintings and introduced him to the contemporary artistic circles. Later on, Eugeni d’Ors included him in the X Salón de los Once in Madrid in 1953. From then on, his career developed, reaching its peak in the sixties, without ever abandoning his personal style.
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