Juan Eduardo Cirlot

Juan Eduardo Cirlot Laporta (9 April 1916 – 11 May 1973) was a Spanish poet, art critic, hermeneutist, mythologist, and musician.

Cirlot was born in Barcelona to Juan Cirlot and Maria Laporta. There he matriculated high school from the College of the Jesuits and worked in a customs agency and the Banco Hispanoamericano while also studying music.

In 1937, he was mobilized to fight for the Second Spanish Republic. In early 1940, he was mobilized again, but this time by the pro-Franco side. He was in Zaragoza until 1943; there he frequented the city's intellectual and artistic circles and associated with the painter Alfonso Buñuel—brother of Luis Buñuel—with whom he translated the poems of Paul Éluard, André Breton, and Antonin Artaud. During this period, he read many avant-garde art books and magazines.

In the summer of 1943, he returned to Barcelona to work in the Banco Hispanoamericano. He met novelist Benítez de Castro, who introduced him in the media as an art critic. On 11 August 1947, he married Gloria Valenzuela, then began to work in the editorial bookstore "Argos". He composed music and worked with the artists of the Dau al Set, a Catalan group. On 21 October 1948, he premiered his Preludio in the Ateneu Barcelonès.

In 1949, his daughter Lourdes was born, and he became a writer for the Dau al Set magazine journal. In October, he traveled to Paris and met André Breton. Igor Stravinsky, his first treatise, was published. In 1951, he began to work in the Gustavo Gili publishing house, where he remained until his death. That year, he also began to collect antique swords.

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