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toCatalan sculpture.Miralles discovers a realism ‘caused by theweight of themodel before abstract theories’ that requires but an ‘intense sense of beauty’. Thus hedescribed the unique novelty of Jassans’swork compared to 20th- centuryCatalan sculpture’s traditionof leavingbehind the legacy of Noucentisme . Thewomen sculptedby Jassans are the result of total observation, butmore than that, of a conscious, concise observation, far from anything that is non-essential. Here we can find theGreek legacy in Jassans’swork, where he turned himself to concision. And this synthesis is the clearest link to the classical tradition. A synthesis of observationof the natural toobtain classical art, not as adouble (natural truth), but as a synthetic formal construction (artistic truth), naked anddenudedof the superfluous and literary, of the skin-deepmeaning that wewould find if we observed the body asmerematerial. Jassans found this very idea in the words of Goethe: ‘anyone can see thematter before them: the substance is only discoveredby thepersonwhohas something to add: the form is a secret for almost everyone’. See here themerit of the classical artist that emerges in the magneticbeauty of Jassans’s figures.Womenmade tobe contemplated in their form that transports us to a universal contemplationof the spirit. This reminds us of a concept that theGreeks named areté as an ideal of excellence and perfection: the self-knowledge that finds one of its paths in the appreciationof beauty. This temperance of form not only does not renounce its bodily component, but rather extols it, searching for its transcendence. To create, like innature, but not to imitate, but rather to transform it into a newpoetical, created, artistic truth. The formof thewoman then is not even a theme or a symbol: it becomes an essence, aprimordial form through which todevelop an artistic thought: form. Jassans’swomenpresent this communionbetween the eroticismof nature and thepurity of spirit. In his hands these woman represent the organic natural beauty of the female bodywhile transmitting a great spirituality: a spirituality that is universal, humanised and transcendent. They are the reflectionof what overcomes themerephysicality of the work: the search for the soul of the form. FromMarch2016 toMarch 2017, a travelling exhibition entitled Greece Imagines will pay homage to this sculptor on the 10th anniversary of his death in a lively dialogue between the classical and the contemporary. The exhibition canbe visited in theMonastery ofMontserrat (Barcelona), theMuseuDeu (Tarragona) and theEuropeanMuseumof ModernArt (Barcelona). JorgeEgea JosepS. Jassans > Nerea , 1980 Maderapolicromada/ PolychromedWood 90