Josep Pijoan i Soteras
(Barcelona, 1879 - Lausana, Suiza, 1963)

Josep Pijoan i Soteras is primarily known as a historian of art and culture, but he was also an architect, poet, essayist and cultural activist. He published his first poems in Pèl i Ploma, in 1901, and El cançoner, his first and only collection of poems, appeared in 1905, with a foreword by Joan Maragall. In 1903, he obtained a B.A. in arts and architecture, and traveled to Italy for the first time. On his return, he spent several months in Madrid, where he befriended Francisco Giner de los Ríos, with whom he maintained a close intellectual relationship.

Back in Catalonia, Pijoan became one of the main supporters of Enric Prat de la Riba and his cultural initiatives from the Diputación de Barcelona. In 1906, he was appointed member of the Board of Museums of Barcelona, where he promoted the creation of the Museum of Art and Archeology, the model for other Catalan museums of both disciplines. Also in 1906, he was one of the organizers of the First International Congress of the Catalan language, and the following year, he promoted the creation of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC), a center dedicated until 1911exclusively to historical studies and to the creation of a library in Barcelona comparable to the national libraries in other European cities. Pijoan became its first secretary general and maintained close relations with the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE), which designed its Center for Historical Studies according to the initial outline of the IEC. With support from the IEC, Pijoan established the Spanish School of History and Archeology of Rome, and was secretary and acting director from 1910 to 1913. His affair with an upper class married woman from Barcelona, who moved with him to Rome, kept them in Italy. They returned to Spain only sporadically.

In 1913, he moved to Toronto, where he focused on architecture and taught Spanish in college, while he completed his Historia del Arte  (1914), reprinted many times. He was professor of art history at Pomona College in Claremont, California, from 1921 to 1929. During those years, he published Historia del mundo (1926), El meu amic don Joan Maragall (1927), and Mi don Francisco Giner (1927). With the proclamation of the Second Republic, he returned to Madrid and began the publication of his monumental Summa Artis. Historia general del arte (1931). From 1936, he taught history of art in Chicago, New York, and Geneva, while continuing with the publication of his work.  He spent the last years of his life in Lausanne, where he died.