El Cap de Barcelona, a towering Pop sculpture, stands proudly on the waterfront in Barcelona, Spain. Created by American artist Roy Lichtenstein in 1991-1992 for the 1992 Summer Olympics, this remarkable artwork resembles the head and face of a woman, rendered in thick pieces of concrete and covered in vibrant mosaic tiles.
Employing the broken tile technique, El Cap de Barcelona incorporates blue, yellow, black, and white tiles. The woman's eyes look like thick blue and black brush strokes, while her lips look like Lichtenstein could have used a quick stroke of bright red paint. The left third of her face is covered with white tiles, while the right two thirds is covered in a grid of red dots, typical of Lichtenstein's pop-art style.
The sculpture was built to resemble the style of Antoni Gaudi, a Catalan architect famous for employing organic lines and mosaic tiles throughout his architecture. Lichtenstein's work is his first outdoor piece using glazed ceramic tile, and it serves as a reference to the trencadís mosaic technique used by Gaudi and Josep Maria Jujol.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Nik Frost
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