Arxius de Miró - Blog Fundació Joan Miró

27_05_2021

Rue Blomet, a Space for Poetry

Miró dreamt of a large studio. At one point or another, all artists have dreamt of a large studio – a creative space that would enable them to build their utterly personal microcosm. Coinciding with the exhibition Shared Studios. Three Case Studies, which explores the experiences and affinities of artists working in the same space, we wanted to look back at one of Miró’s first studios, in the Paris of the 1920s, at 45 Rue Blomet.

21_03_2021

Teresa Montaner and Editorial Team

The Fundació Joan Miró Archive: Awareness of and Responsibility for a Legacy

Coinciding with the presentation of the Miró – ADLAN. An Archive of Modernity (1932-1936) exhibition at the Fundació Joan Miró, we are publishing the following interview with Teresa Montaner, the head of collections who is also responsible for the Fundació’s archive.

16_02_2021

Pedro Azara

Letters that matter

Museums collect and exhibit the most familiar side of artists, their works of art. In their effort to make them known, however, certain anecdotes are often lost, many of which will only come to be revealed by chance or through the tenacity of someone with a curious, analytical approach. Pedro Azara, architect and Professor of Aesthetics at the Barcelona School of Architecture, has uncovered a facet of Miró’s personality, of his way of approaching things and of relating with his friends, revealed in the determined coherence of a gesture.

Miró
poetry

15_10_2020

Editorial Team

Civic responsibility of the artist

Joan Miró was committed to his times and his country, as he proved in his speech when he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Barcelona on 2 October, 1979.

Miró spoke of a “human approach” which is innate to all artists, binding them to society with a sense of their responsibility as citizens and driving them to create with the aim of “serving all men”. As proof of this claim, Miró created numerous posters throughout his life, seeking to have his voice be that of a community. In the streets, his posters became public action and broke the boundaries of authorship to become expressions of social engagement.

Some of these posters, which synthesize causes and projects to which Miró was committed, now allow us to illustrate his speech from 1979. Both the posters and the speech have been sources of inspiration for the “What are your causes?” workshop organized by the Fundació Joan Miró as part of the Open City Thinking Biennale.

19_02_2020

Elena Escolar

Mont-roig, Understanding the Landscape

Mont-roig is a small village in rural Tarragona that played a decisive role in the course of Joan Miró’s life and work. In this text, the Fundació’s curator Elena Escolar offers us a slow-motion description of Mont-roig, the Church and the Village, painted in 1919 and presented in the special Catalan art section of the thirteenth Salon d’Automne in Paris, in 1920, almost one hundred years ago. To grasp Joan Miró’s intangible universe, it is essential to have a sense and an understanding of the landscape and the land itself in Mont-roig.

03_12_2019

Mercè Sabartés

A commitment to freedom and to upholding Catalonia’s identity

Through the posters that he designed, Joan Miró demonstrated his commitment to society and to culture. He believed that artistic creation should go hand in hand with a civic sense of responsibility.

Mercè Sabartés is part of the team of the Fundació Miró’s Communications Department and the holder of a postgraduate degree in Mironian Studies from the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). In this article, she offers an insight into Miró’s facet as an activist and explains how, for the artist, his voice was inseparable from his commitment to the community.

23_10_2019

Berta Jardí

Horses and Automobiles

In 1918, Joan Miró painted a portrait of his friend Heribert Casany. Berta Jardí rescues Heribert from oblivion in her novel L’home del barret (Univers, 2019) and reveals the story behind the painting.

For the Fundació’s blog, the author gives her account of the painting’s extraordinary journey since Miró painted it until it was finally shown at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Its wanderings are surrounded by horses and automobiles, mysteriously connected to the life of the man in the portrait.

29_05_2019

Cristian Cirici

ORIM

Fifty years ago this May, the exhibition Miró, the Other was held at the Catalonia Architects’ Association (or COAC according to its Catalan acronym), the first exhibition of Joan Miró’s work to expound and demonstrate its militant facet.

In this blog, we reproduce an article by Cristian Cirici, published years ago in the “Traços” section of the e-magazine Carnet, which outlines the origins of the project.

30_04_2019

Pedro Strukelj

Illustrated Chronicle of the Tapestry of the Fundació

Pedro Strukelj, an Argentine-Mexican living in Barcelona, is an illustrator, architect, and cultural manager. He defines himself as a chronicler of cultural experiences. This illustrated chronicle is his account as a witness to the recently completed process of preventive conservation for the Tapestry of the Fundació. His palette is a colour map that suggests a faraway land –that of his Latin American roots, which, as in Miró, connect us with a world where the tradition of craftsmanship is deeply respected.

19_12_2018

Susana Carnicero

Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves

Susana Carnicero graduated in Fine Arts and holds a post-graduate degree in Miró studies. Her fascination with colour as matter is the point of departure for a personal, subjective description in which a blue spot against a white background leads her on an exploration of the symbolism of this colour through a variety of artists.

10_10_2018

Anna Noëlle

Anonymity

Museums and art centres are taking on an increasingly active role in listening to their visitors’ opinions. Learning how to analyse their users’ comments allows them to gain a better knowledge of their public and to measure the impact of the contents the museum offers.

This post is only a poetic reflection, a counterpoint to the cold analysis of the data and the indicators that were collected in the Fundació’s spaces throughout the summer of 2018.

12_06_2018

Arnau Puig

The Farm at Mont-Roig. Joan Miró’s Philosophy and Religion

Drawing on the philosophical tradition, Arnau Puig reflects on the concept of reality and the way Joan Miró transformed it through the lens of his own subjectivity. Mont-roig was the heart and the site of this almost mystical act by which reality was transformed into poetry.

Arnau Puig is an art critic specialising in sociology. He is a graduate in philosophy, founder of the artists’ group Dau al Set, and a regular contributor to several art publications. And an expert in the work of Joan Miró.

05_04_2018

Elena Juncosa Vecchierini

‘All I did was look.’ Mont-roig, the Landscape of Joan Miró

Joan Miró’s Mont-roig embodies his roots and his ties to the land and to the simplicity of everyday things. Mont-roig is a symbol and a reality, both personal and universal, and the point of departure for everything.

On the occasion of the opening of Mas Miró, the farmhouse where the artist spent many summers, historian and Fundació Mas Miró Director Elena Juncosa follows in the footsteps of the artist’s sensibility to place us in the unalterable timelessness of one of Miró’s most important emotional landscapes.

land
Miró

24_01_2018

Eduard Escoffet

Miró as a Sounding Board

Coinciding with the recent publication of Joan Punyet Miró’s book Miró & Music (Ed. Alrevés, 2017), poet and cultural agitator Eduard Escoffet explores the close connection that Joan Miró developed with music and his ‘likeminded spirits’ in other creative fields. In a sentimental journey that begins with Miró’s poster for John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s legendary performance in Sitges in 1966, and travels all the way to the Nits de Música at the Fundació, Escoffet brings us closer to the artist’s legacy, ‘an attitude, a spirit of openness and an urge to engage in dialogue with the present.’

20_12_2017

Isidre Estévez

Malet is Leaving, but Rosa Maria Is Here to Stay. A Nuanced Farewell

Rosa Maria Malet is leaving. In September, the Board of Trustees of the Fundació Joan Miró appointed Marko Daniel as the new director. The farewell party that the Fundació held last July for the woman who had been at the helm of the institution during the past 37 years was not a farewell to a position, but to a person: to Rosa Maria, to her character, to her way of being and of doing things. Many media outlets and numerous journalists have featured her in their spaces and interviews over the past few months. Isidre Estévez, a journalist friend and a person with close, long-standing ties to the Fundació, had a chance to hold a very personal interview with her.

15_06_2017

Dolors R. Roig

À toute épreuve and the Art of Language

On the occasion of the Éluard, Cramer, Miró – À toute épreuve, more than a book exhibition, Dolors R. Roig examines the creative process behind the book by Joan Miró based on a collection of poems by Paul Éluard, explaining how Miró ventured beyond illustration and how the collaborative project led to new poems. While reviewing this creative adventure, her article addresses the way in which Éluard’s and Miró’s imaginations merged.

Dolors R. Roig holds a PhD in Art History and specializes in modern and contemporary art. She is responsible for art research and programming at Galeria Mayoral and teaches at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, where she was involved in the Joan Miró: An Artist Who Defined a Century MOOC and the Miró Studies Postgraduate Diploma.

05_05_2017

Ester Ramos

The Morning Star Flies to the United States to Join the Other Constellations

Morning star is one of the 23 Constellations that Miró painted from 1940 to 1941, following his desire to escape from reality right after the outbreak of World War II. This group of pieces conveys an idealized vision of a world of celestial beings. Since its creation, the series has been shown almost in full on three occasions in New York. Now, Acquavella Galleries has managed to bring together the nearly complete series in the Miró: Constellations show that will be on exhibit from 20 April through 26 May, 2017. Art historian and FJM assistant curator Ester Ramos describes this gathering of the Constellations as a historic event and tells us about the importance of this series in the life and work of Joan Miró.

14_12_2016

Anna del Valle

The Eroticism of Objects

In the 1930s, assemblages, constructions and collages made with unconventional materials led Miró to produce three-dimensional work. His powerful attraction to the object was the first step towards the construction of poetic and dramatically violent images – and a path of artistic subversion leading to the transformation of the object into sculpture.

assemblage

07_11_2016

Àlex Hinojo

Miró the Wikipedian

Miró didn’t discuss painting, because he said he wasn’t interested in it. To him, painting was a vehicle of expression for the spirit, which is the only thing of interest. As I see it, Wikipedia – as an encyclopaedia – is also just a tool, a tool that allows me to share information with the greatest possible number of people, focusing on the ultimate goal of collaborating to shape the critical spirit of mature citizens who question the world they live in.

03_11_2016

Editorial Team

A piece of thread can unleash a world

‘A piece of thread can unleash a world,’ said Miró to express that a blotch, a splash, or a point on a sheet of paper could release an entire creative universe.

In the blog we are opening today, we would also like a concept to be the point of departure for further exploring and opening up new themes that will enrich and complement the original contents.