Àngel Jové

Painter, actor, poet, filmmaker, designer—Àngel Jové moved freely between disciplines, pushing the boundaries of each. Born in Lleida in 1940, he studied architecture until 1964, the year he founded the Cogul group, an informalist collective that later shifted toward pop art. These early experiences led him to experiment with materials, formats, and concepts, resulting in a body of work that quickly became conceptual, critical, and symbolically charged.

From the beginning, he worked with everyday materials, focusing on space, form, and emptiness. His work became a reference for Catalan conceptual art, featured in exhibitions in Lleida, Barcelona, Ottawa, Johannesburg, and Berlin. His pieces blend melancholy and enigma, combining photomontages, printed textiles, and immersive installations that push back against the commercialization of art.

In the 1970s, Jové broadened his scope: he published visual poetry collections like Verbo Ser (1970) and Tratado de los órdenes arquitectónicos (1971), acted in films by Bigas Luna and Jesús Garay, and worked as a screenwriter, illustrator, and art director for television. Though nomadic in form, his work maintained a poetic and existential coherence over time.

His entry into the world of design came through Santiago Roqueta, with whom he collaborated on the interior design of Barcelona’s legendary Sala Zeleste. That project gave rise to the Babel and Zeleste table lamps—true manifestos in defense of alabaster, a material often dismissed as vulgar, which Jové reimagined with expressive power. These pieces made a lasting impression: bold, sculptural, lit from within. An industrial take on Arte Povera, and an aesthetic gesture for a new democratic bourgeoisie.

Àngel Jové stands as a singular, cross-disciplinary figure in contemporary Spanish culture. Trained as an architect, devoted to art, his work resists labels and turns raw matter into meaning.