Born in 1934 in Salt, he worked since he was little because of his orphanhood, and once he graduated in Technology he moved to France in 1959 because of the extreme poverty that was lived at that time in Girona. Shortly afterwards he joined the navy, with whom he traveled the world, returning in 1961. This experience led him to enroll in the Academy of Modern Art in Aix-en-Provence and a year later to move to Paris, where he received classes in various academies, among them the Popular Academy of Plastic Arts, where he worked as assistant to the sculptors Apel·les Fenosa and César Baldaccini; as well as cinema at the École Pratique des Hautes Études.

During this first approach to art, Xifra worked on paintings highly influenced by Tàpies’ abstract expressionism and informalism, as well as on a pictorial series based on the trace of the object. He began to use techniques such as printing and solarization, as well as sprays and vinyls, something that would eventually give way to pochoir. But his stay in Chile in 1968 changed his vision and way of working, introducing the object through research between art, ritual and ceremonial.

This new way of working brought him closer to artists such as Antoni Miralda, Joan Rabascall or Antoni Muntadas among others, creating the group Catalans a París, with whom he worked until the end of the 70s. Most of their joint works orbit around the idea of the rediscovery of the ritual and ceremonial from a lay point of view, putting into play the role of the spectator and giving back to the population those ceremonials that were being abandoned from the church. Most of these performances were staged throughout France, including the 1971 Paris Biennale.

His last artistic stage, which began in the 80s, consists of a return to painting, although through Computer Painting, his own technique that starts from random processes using computer programs. From here, highly colorful and vital portraits emerge from a work process where he later incorporated semi-industrial printers, thus creating large-format fabrics.