The Collection

Jaume Plensa is an internationally renowned sculptor and visual artist best known for his large-scale public installations that explore the human figure, language, and shared notions of spirituality and introspection. He studied at the Llotja School of Art and Design and the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona in the 1970s, later continuing much of his training in a largely self-directed manner. Since his first solo exhibition in Barcelona in 1980, Plensa has lived and worked in cities including Berlin, Brussels, and various locations in England, France, and the United States; he currently resides and works in Barcelona. He has taught at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and serves as a recurring guest professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in addition to lecturing widely at universities and institutions around the world.

Plensa’s practice encompasses sculpture, drawing, printmaking, installation, sound, and stage design, often using materials such as steel, cast iron, glass, marble, resin, light, water, and sound. Predominantly figurative in recent decades, his work frequently depicts elongated, meditative human heads and figures rendered in materials ranging from stainless-steel mesh and carved marble to letter-forms and numerals. Throughout his oeuvre, literature, language, psychology, and collective memory figure prominently, as he seeks to “lend physical weight” to aspects of the human condition that are otherwise intangible. His public works invite contemplation of silence, interiority, and community—what he describes as the tension between “one foot in normal life and one foot in the most amazing abstraction.”

A significant portion of Plensa’s career has unfolded in the public realm. His landmark Crown Fountain (2004) in Chicago’s Millennium Park—two 50-foot glass-brick towers with LED video portraits and a reflecting pool—marked a turning point, leading to major commissions worldwide. Notable public works include Dream (2009) in St Helens, England; Breathing (2005) for the BBC in London; El alma del Ebro in Zaragoza; Alchemist (2010) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Spillover II in Shorewood, Wisconsin; Echo in Madison Square Park, New York; Laura at the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Love in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands; Water’s Soul (2021) in Jersey City; and Utopia (2021) at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids. Recent large-scale works include Behind the Walls (2018), presented at Rockefeller Center and later installed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art; Constel·lacions (2022) for the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona; Endless (2023) at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame; and The House of Light and Love (2024) in Taipei.

Plensa has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at institutions such as Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Musée d’art moderne de Céret; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, England; MAMC Saint-Étienne; Max Ernst Museum, Brühl; and MACBA, Barcelona, among others. Key projects include early retrospectives at Fundació Joan Miró and Jeu de Paume (1996–97); Love Sounds at Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (1999); The Secret Heart in Augsburg (2014); Die Innere Sight at the Max Ernst Museum (2016); the traveling exhibition Human Landscape across several U.S. museums (2015–16); Chaque visage est un lieu at Céret (2022); and Poesia del Silenci (2023) in Barcelona. His work is held in numerous public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Reina Sofía, Madrid; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and many others.

Over the course of his career, Plensa has received numerous honors, including the Medaille de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (France, 1993), the Government of Catalonia’s National Prize for Fine Art (1997), Spain’s National Prize for Fine Art (2012), and the Velázquez Prize for the Arts (2013). He has been awarded the Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture (2009, for Dream), the Global Fine Art Award for Best Public Outdoor Installation (2015, for Together, a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale), and the National Graphic Arts Award from the Calcografía Nacional in Madrid (2013). He holds honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and the University of Notre Dame. In parallel with his sculptural work, Plensa has maintained a long-standing engagement with printmaking and with theater and opera, designing sets and costumes since the mid-1990s and serving as stage director, set, and costume designer for Macbeth at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 2023. His work is regularly exhibited with Galerie Lelong & Co. (Paris and New York) and GRAY (Chicago and New York.