Oscar Masotta. Theory as Action

The exhibition seeks to reconstruct the intellectual development of Óscar Masotta (Buenos Aires, 1930 – Barcelona, 1979). His theoretical interests were multiple and mobile: from literature and militant politics to the artistic avant-garde and comic strips, psychoanalysis, semiology, structuralism and much more. A heterodox Marxist and an intellectual on the margins of academia, he was (and continues to be) a controversial figure due to his dandyism and the ‘frivolity’ of his passions, and for failing to fit into the model of the committed or organic intellectual.

Choosing to live in exile in Barcelona, where he remained until his premature death in 1979, Masotta introduced the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan to Spain through a study group and with the Biblioteca del Campo Freudiano (Freudian Field Library). The exhibition at MACBA also reveals the traces and influences he has left on the city of Barcelona, not only in the field of psychoanalysis but also in the cultural milieu.