Joan Pérez-Jorba, mediador cultural de l’avantguarda

Pilar García-Sedas's book illustrates this second period of Pérez-Jorba's life with rigor and exhaustiveness. Pérez-Jorba is now definitively Parisian. The chronology is precise: 1917–1920. Thanks to the documents he unearthed, we can appreciate the richness of his vision and his access to firsthand materials and direct relationships with the great names of the Parisian avant-garde. What is most characteristic of Pérez-Jorba and unites him with a handful of his contemporaries is his intellectual curiosity and desire to modernize Catalan culture. At the end of the nineteenth century, this desire had a precise name: "Modernisme." Years later, transplanted to Paris, his curiosity continues to draw him closer to avant-garde initiatives. He had a logic. Like so many others, he was dazzled by European literature in two stages. He vindicated some of the most important authors and fundamental principles, such as the independence of the artist and the mythification of art.