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“To David, on his first birthday,” can be read on the back of a large canvas, all resplendent blue and electric reds and blacks, made in 1965. The ‘davidin’ of the dedication is actually David Fernández Miró and who handles the brush, they have guessed right, is none other what Joan Miro, universal artist, pioneer of surrealism and, as if that were not enough, grandfather of four children: Emilio, Teo, Joan and, of course, David.
In their day, somewhere between the sixties and seventies, all of them had their own dedicated ‘miró’, canvases that they now display, facing each other, in one of the ‘I look. The most intimate legacy’, exhibition that brings together nearly 200 pieces to reconstruct the Catalan painter from his most intimate and personal facet.
That is: the Miró husband, father, grandfather and, above all, collector for the whole family. The public Miró and the grandfather Joan.
The intimate legacy that becomes universal. “When David and Emilio’s father died, my grandfather did the first two. And in our first communion he gave me the sun and Teo the moon. I did not understand anything, but only with the colors I was already hallucinating, “he recalls Joan Punyet Miró, grandson of the artist and administrator of Succesió Miró, during the presentation of an exhibition that can be visited until September 26 at the Miró Foundation in Barcelona.
Before entering the exhibition, however, a little history. Last September the mystery was finally revealed and it was learned that until then it was known colloquially as the “Mirós de Madrid”, fifty works that had been exhibited since 2016 at the Mapfre Foundation, had taken the airlift to travel to Barcelona and join, for at least five years, the funds of the Miró Foundation. “In a context of bad news, the family made the decision to deposit 54 works by Miró and 5 by Alexander Calder in the Foundation”, recalls the president of the Barcelona institution, Sara Puig.
Here, then, is another “gift from Miró to the city”, a gift to add to the Pla de l’Os or to the airport mosaic and on which a major exhibition is now erected that approaches the artist from the collections that he was creating for his family. For his four grandchildren, yes, but also for his daughter María Dolores (“Pour Dolorès”, we read on the back of the canvases) and his wife Pilar (“In my swallow” Miró writes). “The show starts with a symbolic gift, so instead of making an exhibition with only those 54 pieces, we thought it would be much more interesting to show them in relation to other previous donations and in dialogue with the base of the collection,” he explains. Marko Daniel, director of the Miró Foundation and curator of the exhibition together with Elena Escolar and Dolors Rodríguez Roig.
In all, ‘Looked. The most intimate legacy ‘, brings together 80 paintings and sculptures and more than a hundred drawings, photographs and documents that make it possible to configure “a personal story that complements his vision as an artist”. «It is not normal that good artists are also good people«, slide those responsible for the exhibition.
Everything stays in the family
“When my grandfather went to visit Picasso, he would tell him: ‘gosh, Joan, you always come with the same woman'”, adds Joan Punyet Miró in an attempt to underline the role and importance of Pilar Juncosa, Miró’s wife for more than half a century and a true pillar of the family. «She was always in the shadows, but she was the one in charge, the one who pulled the strings with the gallery owners. Miró was more poetic, cosmic and volatile. Together they formed a winning tandem”, recalls the artist’s grandson. She was also the first person for whom Miró began to collect, reserving one work from each series in what would become known as the ‘Pilar collection’. Pieces such as ‘The morning star’ (1940) and ‘Painting’ (1936) are now coming out of there, as well as curiosities such as wedding menus covered with dedications.
«Miró kept everything. He makes a reservation of practically everything to be able to review himself », notes Rodríguez Roig. Hence, in addition to Miró’s landmarks such as the four ‘burnt fabrics‘ that he made in the early seventies, pieces from the ‘Constellations’ series, ‘pompier’ paintings from the sixties and drawings on paper marked by the horrors of war, the exhibition displays relevant documents such as the letter in which he announced to his parents who left the trade to become an artist, drawings made by his daughter (and tuned in some cases by himself), or the only work that Miró dedicated to his parents.
It is ‘The Wine Bottle’, a work from 1924 with which he embraces surrealism and which opens an exhibition in Barcelona that closes, several rooms later, with portraits by Català-Roca and photographs of Miró playing ball with his grandchildren. “To Joan Punyent, carinyosament”, we then read on the back of ‘Character and birds in front of the sun’, the painting that, while others had to settle for gold-plated medals or a set of pen and pen, Miró’s grandson received the day of his First Communion.
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