Exhibition Jaume Perich: Critical Humor
Jaume Perich was one of the most incisive, influential and popular graphic humorists in our country. His sharp and deeply critical eye allowed him to portray the society of the last third of the 20th century with surgical precision. With a sober aesthetic and biting intelligence, Perich turned humor into a tool for social, political and cultural analysis.
His seemingly simple strokes concealed great conceptual complexity. From the everyday to the most structural, his work addressed diverse topics with uncommon lucidity. His humor did not only seek to provoke laughter, but also to make people uncomfortable, question, and awaken reflection. Always from a clearly progressive position, his work was characterized by a firm defense of freedom of expression and a critical attitude towards censorship and established powers.
More than twenty-five years have passed since his death, yet his legacy remains fully relevant. His drawings continue to surprise with their timeliness, as if time has not eroded his ability to interpret the world. This relevance explains the growing interest in his figure and the need to revisit his work from a contemporary perspective.
In this context, the Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria (Born CCM) wanted to highlight his figure, his career, and his contribution to critical thinking through humor. The exhibition “Humor con ojos de gato” (Humor with cat's eyes) brings together a wide selection of original drawings, personal documents, and unpublished materials that, in many cases, had never before been shown to the public. All of this allows not only an approach to the artist, but also to the creative process of a press cartoonist in a particularly turbulent era.
The exhibition also seeks to highlight the profession of the graphic humorist as a chronicler of their time. In this sense, the exhibition becomes a tribute to the power of drawing as a tool for denunciation, but also as a space of freedom. Perich knew how to use laughter as a mechanism to reveal the contradictions of society, dismantle established discourses, and expose the weaknesses of a system full of tensions.
This temporary exhibition, co-produced with the Historical Archive of the City of Barcelona and curated by Jaume Capdevila (KAP), not only recovers the work of an essential author, but also invites reflection on the role of humor in building a more critical and conscious society.
