El Cap de Barcelona

This is a sculpture by the North American Roy Lichtenstein. The red dots are representative of pop art. He used the world of comics as a reference, reproducing their printing systems in his paintings. The trencadís used refers to the modernism period in Barcelona.

Cara de Barcelona (The head) is a large sculpture by the North American artist Roy Lichtenstein. It was created with the help of Diego Delgado Rajado, a sculptor from Extremadura. The sculpture is in Colom avenue, next to Moll de la Fusta (the wooden pier). It dominates the entrance to the fishermen’s’ neighbourhood called Barceloneta. The red spots on the Cara de Barcelona sculpture are characteristic of Lichtenstein’s work. He represented pop art and took the world of comics as his reference point, reproducing the comic book printing methods in his paintings. In this sculpture he also used the trencadís technique, which involves creating a mosaic with pieces of broken tile, in honour of the city´s Modernist architecture. The sculpture measures fifteen metres high and is six metres wide. It weighs approximately ninety tonnes and can be seen from far away. It is made of eight pieces of stone, joined together using steel and it is covered with pieces of pottery.

It belongs to a larger collection of sculptures by Roy Lichtenstein called Brushstrokes and it has been shown around the world in cities such as New York, Tokyo and Zurich. These brushstrokes can be seen on the sculpture’s face.