Joan Palet was born in Barcelona on March 28, 1911 in the heart of a family of sculptors and wood carvers.

He begins in the artistic environment from a very young age and helps in the family workshop, where he shows special gifts for drawing and soon manifests an unusual artistic vocation that leads him to draw everything he sees and start a career that will not leave until his death .

​

In 1930, Joan Palet joins  LLotja Barcelona’s famed Fine Arts’ School and he immerses himself with joy in the evening classes and endless work sessions. Some of his teachers were men like Ramon Calsina, Félix Mes- tres, Labarta, F. Pérez Dols y Antoni Vila Arrufat.

For Joan Palet, the civil war began with a personal tragedy that would mark him forever. During the first days of the conflict, his eleven-year-old brother, Marcelinet, suffers an attack of appendicitis. In the midst of the generalized chaos they do not accept him in any hospital, and he dies in his arms. Soon after, Palet is mobilized to the front and is incorporated to the higher ranks of the army as a cartographer.

  After the war ends, Palet comes back to Barcelona and tries to return to the life as an artist, but the world he once knew has now disappeared.
It’s then that he starts a close collaboration with the poet and publisher Josep Janés and other writers as Josep Palau i Fabre. Working as a book illustrator, Palet finds an outlet for his artistic expression.

In the 50's he continues his work as an illustrator , becoming also a recognized portraitist. Palet illustrates with etchings and original drawings the Combat of the dream, book of poems of Josep Janés, of which 200 copies are edited. He also illustrates and decorates handwritten works by the poet Ramon Tor and makes the cover of the first clandestine edition of the book Poems of the Alchemist by Josep Palau i Fabre.
--
 

In the early 1960s, Joan Palet is well known as an illustrator and works on hundreds of assignments for some of the biggest publishers of the time: Plaza y Janés, Seix Barral and Editorial Planeta. The work absorbs him, but even if he doesn’t set up any individual exhibition, he continues to paint and draw many other subjects.

In 1973 the life of Palet undergoes a radical change. At the age of 62, he abandons his work as an illustratior to devote himself fully to painting and drawing. Absent art galleries for 22 years, he returns and begins working as hard as even. It launches himself into painting with a youthful passion that will not leave him until his death, in 1996.

Here you can find a photo gallery of  Joan Palet's life