Joaquim Vicens Gironella was born in Catalonia, near the French border. As most of his family worked as craftsmen - cork makers, he was initiated to the same craft, which became also his passion. Already during his adolescence he wrote articles and poems celebrating the qualities of cork oak for local press. Even if he followed only basic education, he began writing dramas, poems and novels. In 1936, he became involved in the Spanish army. Anti-fascist and Republican, he directed a weekly journal entitled Military Unity.
The victory of Franco supporters meant that he had to leave the country. On February 5th, 1939, he escaped to France. He would be interned in the camp of Bram, in Aude. After his liberation, Gironella moved to Toulouse where he started to work in a factory. He married Paz Santiago, refugee like him.
Around 1941, Gironella discovered a new hobby : he began sculpting clay, but very soon he went back to his favourite material, cork. The director of the hospital, René Lajus, became interested in Gironella’s carvings and asked him to lend him several sculptures for his office in Paris. In 1948, Jean Dubuffet, who was at that time still a wine merchant, visited the office of René Lajus for a command of corks. He fell in love with Gironella’s work and decided to organize an exhibition of his cork carvings in the Foyer de l’Art Brut.
Even if Gironella’s early works recall African sculptures, he never manifested a conscious will to achieve a certain form of "primitivism,’’ as was the case of Avant-garde artists in the 1920s. Progressively, Gironella would transform his technique of work, creating in particular mural panels, whose inspirational sources can be found in the themes linked to his native Catalonia, Muslim art, but also medieval representations. In 1990 Gironella published a book dedicated to the celebration of cork, Exaltatió del suro, containing his poems in Catalan and illustrations. The publication was made entirely out of cork.
Joaquim Vicens Gironella died in Toulouse at the age of eighty-six years.

SEE ALSO : Joaquim Vicens Gironella, text by Michel Thévoz, Lausanne, Collection de l’Art Brut, 1998.