(b Girona, 5 March 1918). Spanish Catalan painter, printmaker and writer. He finished his schooling in Béziers, France, from 1932 to 1934 and at the Escola Massana in Barcelona in 1935. The son of the poet Josep Tharrats, he published his own volume of poetry, Abracadabra, in 1938, and he began painting in 1940 but evolved a very personal style only in 1946. His first major works, abstractions made of cut or torn papers, were produced in that year. He was a founder and leading member of the DAU AL SET group in Barcelona, and he was largely responsible for the design and printing of their influential avant-garde magazine until 1954. He was also a distinguished art critic, particularly for the Barcelona journal Revista. Among his best-known and most idiosyncratic works is a series of abstract paintings that he initiated in 1954, each titled Maculatura, a term used in the printing industry to describe a technique of seemingly accidental effects (Lat. macula: ‘stain’); these works, such as Maculatura no. 1 (0.48*2.15 mm, 1955; Madrid, Mus. A. Contemp.), look mechanically printed but consist of lyrical and decorative layers of stained colour. His later paintings were increasingly dynamic, as in the case of imaginary cosmic landscapes such as Poseidon (1972; Barcelona, Sala Gaspar). Tharrats was highly regarded also as a jewellery designer (see 1975 exh. cat., pls 59–65) and as a printmaker. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Barcelona, in 1994.

• Tharrats (i Vidal), Joan-Josep
  • Barcelona, §II, 3: Art life and organization, after 1888
  • Dau al Set