MIRÓ AT THE SCHIRN

SORRY!

You need to activate JavaScript to view this website.

MIRÓ AT THE SCHIRN
26 FEBRUARY UNTIL 12 JUNE 2016
Joan Miró, Deux oiseaux de proie (detail), May 29, 1973
Joan Miró, Constellations, 1959

NEW APPROACH TO MIRÓ

You are fa­mil­iar with Joan Miró as one of the great­est 20th cen­tury artists, with his imag­i­na­tive vi­sual worlds and pow­er­ful col­ors. But do you also know his large for­mats? Are you aware of his fas­ci­na­tion with walls, both in­side and out­side? Of his ex­per­i­ments with un­usual ma­te­ri­als? The SCHIRN ex­hi­bi­tion PAINT­ING WALLS, PAINT­ING WORLDS gives you an op­por­tu­nity to dis­cover a side to Miró that pre­vi­ously was scarcely known – about 50 in some cases mon­u­men­tal works from im­por­tant mu­se­ums and pri­vate col­lec­tions all over the world.

I want to assassinate painting.

Joan Miró

A murderer and his motive

At an early date Joan Miró de­vel­oped the wish to put an end to con­ven­tional paint­ing. In 1927 the al­ways per­fectly clad young man an­nounced in pub­lic: “I want to as­sas­si­nate paint­ing.” The pub­lic was in­censed, until it be­came clear what his mo­ti­va­tion was.

Miró was in­tent on no less than over­throw­ing a tra­di­tion he ab­horred. A rad­i­cally re­duced pic­to­r­ial idiom and a large num­ber of ex­per­i­ments were the tools he chose for the deed. There was no over­look­ing the traces he left: He var­ied the pic­to­r­ial grounds, ploughed through ma­te­ri­als like a farmer cul­ti­vat­ing his fields. His pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with tex­tures led him to adopt ever larger for­mats, which went as far as mon­u­men­tal mu­rals. The young Cata­lan who had sal­lied forth to mur­der paint­ing was in the opin­ion of those that came later to be­come one of the re­ju­ve­na­tors of mod­ern art, and one who never ceased joy­fully ex­per­i­ment­ing.

Joan Miró around 1930, photographed by Man Ray

The entire world in a single image

Un­like his Sur­re­al­ist com­pan­ions, Miró found it easy to forgo life in the pul­sat­ing me­trop­o­lis of Paris.

He at times with­drew to the re­mote rural com­mu­nity of Mont-roig del Camp, where his fam­ily had a farm since 1911. From care­fully ob­serv­ing plain walls he cre­ated a mi­cro­cosm that was to be­come a key image for his later artis­tic de­vel­op­ment: “The Farm” (1921-22). Here we can dis­cern Miró’s con­cern with the prop­er­ties of ma­te­ri­als and tex­tures as well as the trend to­ward ab­strac­tion. These were his first steps into a trail­blaz­ing form of paint­ing that was later to emerge as his trade­mark.

Joan Miró, La Ferme, 1921/22

The magic of the pri­mor­dial

One could be for­given be­liev­ing that the enig­matic scenes, fig­ures and ob­jects in his paint­ing “The Farm” refer to the Sur­re­al­ist con­cern with dreams and the un­con­scious. While this en­vi­ron­ment most cer­tainly in­flu­enced Miró it was not the source of his in­spi­ra­tion: He dis­cov­ered the themes on his fam­ily’s farm. The fig­ures and ob­jects are arranged in­di­vid­u­ally in the pic­to­r­ial space and do not over­lap. More­over, within the gar­den geo­met­ri­cal forms recur – here the artist turns his back on the world of the vis­i­ble and de­parts into a po­etic world of sym­bols.

You never forget the first wall

With the ex­cess of de­tails Miró pre­sents the façade of the farm­yard as a com­po­si­tional coun­ter­weight to the bus­tle in the chicken pen.

It is marked with tears, the plas­ter is flak­ing and is cov­ered with weeds and mosses. The ex­treme at­ten­tion to these struc­tures re­veals not only Miró’s ra­tio­nal and or­der­ing cre­ative mind, but also his affin­ity for ma­te­ri­als and struc­tures. The artist de­votes him­self to the de­tails, and they be­come an im­por­tant cre­ative el­e­ment of his com­po­si­tion.

“One must become an international Catalan” (Joan Miró)

At the be­gin­ning of the 20th cen­tury, in­tel­lec­tu­als, writ­ers and artists sought to strengthen Cat­alo­nia’s cul­tural iden­tity. Art was to re­main true to its Mediter­ranean her­itage. Al­though Miró felt tied to his home coun­try, he did not wish to let the move­ment ab­sorb him and in­creas­ingly be­came an out­sider. His first ex­hi­bi­tion in Barcelona 1918 left view­ers per­plexed and was sav­aged by the re­view­ers. After this fail­ure, it was clear to Miró that to ad­vance his paint­ing he would have to leave his beloved home coun­try and be­come an “in­ter­na­tional Cata­lan”. Cu­ri­ous about mod­ern French art in all its vari­ants, his next des­ti­na­tion was Paris.

0:00 min.
Joan Miró in a letter to Arxiu Ricart of July 18, 1920.

A poetic vision

Joan Miró, Peinture, summer 1936

Head over heels into the world of symbols

As early as the 1920s, Miró con­tin­ued to ad­vance his own lan­guage of im­ages and sym­bols. El­e­ments al­ready hin­tend in “The Farm” were de­vel­oped quite rad­i­cally a few years later.

In his own lan­guage he de­scribed an inner world, bright and in­ex­plic­a­ble, in de­fi­ance of the chaotic times he lived in.

From 1926 on­wards Miró reg­u­larly changed homes, mov­ing be­tween Paris, Mont-roig and Barcelona. Cul­tural, do­mes­tic and po­lit­i­cal up­heavals as well as as­pi­ra­tions for re­gional au­ton­omy shaped the face of Span­ish so­ci­ety dur­ing this epoch. With the out­break of the Span­ish Civil War in 1936 Miró first with­drew to Mont-roig, where he started work­ing on Ma­sonite wood­chip pan­els, and then he went back to Paris.

Joan Miró, Peinture, summer 1936

New old worlds of images

A balmy sum­mer’s night

On a brown­ish ground a woman walks through the night, past a tree. As a lin­ear fig­ure, her shape stands out in the fore­ground. She is formed from a broad tri­an­gu­lar base that cul­mi­nates in a yel­low head. Eyes and hair are dis­cernible. Oval shapes, con­nected by a ver­ti­cal line, em­u­late nat­ural shapes and merge to form the tree in the left mid­dle of the pic­ture. Be­hind it, crossed lines and a semi-cir­cle pro­vide the stars of night. It be­comes ev­i­dent that the Sur­re­al­ist but nonethe­less con­crete paint­ing style Miró used in the 1920s had be­come a sym­bolic lan­guage in his 1936 work “Paint­ing”.

Enigmatic shapes

Re­al­is­tic de­tails have be­come ab­stract en­ti­ties. A cir­cle con­sti­tutes the eye and al­ludes to the head of the woman in pro­file. Lines in­di­cate hair. The line of the hori­zon has dis­ap­peared and the pic­to­r­ial space blends into the sur­face.

The scene is ev­i­dently imag­i­nary. View­ers are ex­pected to use their imag­i­na­tion to cre­ate a woman walk­ing in sum­mer from these ab­stract shapes and sym­bols.

Joan Miró, Paysan catalan à la guitare, 1924

Timeless symbols of rural life

With a few lines, Miró sketches a Cata­lan farmer in his peas­ant garb.

Against the blue ground, two black, crossed lines form a human fig­ure. At the lower end, the line has more of a curve and turns into a rounded shape to which two legs have been added. A red Bar­retina, the tra­di­tional head­gear of Cata­lan men, in­di­cates the head. We can in­tuit a pipe in his right hand and a string in­stru­ment in the left.

The­mat­i­cally speak­ing, Miró re­mains faith­ful to his rural roots. Re­cur­rent sym­bols for plants, human and an­i­mal fig­ures or con­stel­la­tions of stars are uni­ver­sal and time­less. They form the core of a sym­bolic lan­guage that high­lights pri­mor­dial human ex­pe­ri­ences, the sim­plic­ity of which is al­ready to be senses in cave paint­ings.

Joan Miró, Drapeau espagnol, 1925

A painter shows his colors

The paint­ing “Span­ish Flag” (1925) ex­presses Miró’s pa­tri­o­tism.

The arrange­ment of the col­ors red/yel­low/red clearly stands for the Span­ish flag. Oth­er­wise, Miró’s pic­to­r­ial lan­guage here is not read­ily de­ci­pher­able. Some el­e­ments are so sim­ple and uni­ver­sally valid that al­most any­one can as­so­ci­ate some­thing with them. Yet many of the other sym­bols obey only a logic of their own.

Joan Miró, Tête de Femme, 1939

Twixt Heaven and Earth

The world of the imag­i­na­tion

There’s al­ways space for the viewer in Miró’s imag­i­nary worlds full of signs and sym­bols. The artist did not tell sto­ries; rather, com­pletely de­tached from an all-en­com­pass­ing nar­ra­tion, he placed pri­mal-seem­ing sym­bols in the pic­to­r­ial space: Woman, night, tree. This way he also gave the viewer scope for free as­so­ci­a­tions, ideas, and pos­si­bil­i­ties for in­ter­pre­ta­tion. Miró’s pic­tures in­vite us to think about what we see and draw our own con­clu­sions.

When in 1940, dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, there were fears that the Ger­mans were about to in­vade France, Miró re­turned to Spain and took a stu­dio in Palma de Mal­lorca. At the time the coun­try was al­ready under Franco’s dic­ta­tor­ship.

I withdrew into myself and the more skeptical I became of my sur­roun­dings, the closer I came to all those places where spirits dwell: trees, mountains, friendship.

Joan Miró

The Meaning of Colors

Joan Miró, Peinture, 1925
Joan Miró, Peinture (La Magie de la couleur), 1930

Radical reduction

A white ground­ing. Two large patches of color, one yel­low, one red. A small black patch. And noth­ing else?

The piece en­ti­tled “The Magic of Color” pro­duced in 1930 is gen­er­ally re­garded as one of Miró’s key works. In the ab­sence of any fig­u­ra­tive shapes, we con­cen­trate all the more on the col­ors, which float to­wards us like so many dif­fer­ently sized patches. The small black dot em­pha­sizes the im­pres­sion of space and ex­panse. At the same time, the viewer is con­fronted by an empti­ness that could stand for in­fin­ity. Miró chose the cre­ative el­e­ments for his paint­ings with great re­straint: He often ex­clu­sively uses pri­mary col­ors, black lines, re­duced shapes. By re­duc­ing the pic­to­r­ial con­tent to col­ored patches he steps away from the last level of re­al­is­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Joan Miró, Deux oiseaux de proie, May 29, 1973

In Miró’s later piece “Two Birds of Prey” (1973) the painterly means are again re­duced to the es­sen­tials: Only the black out­lines al­lude to the two birds. Their bod­ies re­main ad­hered to the sur­face plane and it is un­clear where the one be­gins and the other ends.

Joan Miró, Peinture (La Magie de la couleur), 1930
Joan Miró, Bleu, 1925

Limitless Blue

An old Mal­lorquin proverb seems to have been trans­lated into art in the paint­ing sim­ply en­ti­tled “Blue”: “It was and it was not.” But is there any­thing here? Miró has sim­ply dyed the en­tire sur­face blue! Not evenly, but with clearly dis­cernible brush­strokes.

The color blue has an im­por­tant place in Miró’s oeu­vre. It oc­curs fre­quently, often as a ground­ing for the pic­to­r­ial sur­face. The pic­ture cre­ated in 1925 re­veals noth­ing about the artist’s in­ten­tions. In an au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal note, Miró him­self at­trib­uted the choice of color to the blue vit­riol lime­wash used for farm­yard walls in Cat­alo­nia.

One in­vari­ably thinks of the sky when see­ing a large blue sur­face. On closer in­spec­tion, how­ever, it turns out to have a small error: In the upper left cor­ner there is a small dot, an in­ten­tional ir­ri­ta­tion! In the form of this patch Miró is think­ing be­yond the con­fines of tra­di­tional paint­ing by al­lud­ing to the de­struc­tion of the ground­ing as a cre­ative el­e­ment in the pic­to­r­ial space. A hole would ex­pand the flat medium of the paint­ing into the third di­men­sion. This small de­tail seems, as it were, to pre-empt the works of Lucio Fontana who in the mid-20th cen­tury rev­o­lu­tion­ized the con­cept of space in paint­ing by ac­tu­ally care­fully de­stroy­ing the medium of the can­vas. The re­duc­tion of col­ors is later echoed in the works of an Yves Klein or a Mark Rothko.

If one looks more closely, one can make out a hor­i­zon­tal change in the pic­ture’s sur­face in the upper third of it. It is al­most as if the can­vas had had a tear here that some­one tried to re­pair with plas­ter, as one would do with the wall of a house. Here too, Miró’s works ref­er­ence walls as a source of in­spi­ra­tion.

Monu­mental formats

Joan Miró, Peinture, 1953

Blue picture grounds [embody] pure painting that arises from the feeling of solitude and despair that incessantly persecutes me.

Joan Miró

Miró makes use of that blue that ac­com­pa­nied him from child­hood to cre­ate mon­u­men­tal tex­tured back­grounds. On it he placed in­di­vid­ual dots and lin­ear el­e­ments in red and black.

Be­tween 1961 and 1974 in Mal­lorca, Miró cre­ated a se­ries of tri­par­tite art­works of mon­u­men­tal size in the stu­dio rooms that he had de­signed es­pe­cially for the large paint­ings. Miró al­ways showed a pref­er­ence for large-size for­mats. They grant the painter ex­pan­sive ges­tures that arise from the free move­ment of the body. One of the high­lights of his long ca­reer is the trip­tych ”Blue I–III”, which con­fronts the viewer with a truly ter­ri­fy­ing empti­ness. Its bar­ren­ness cou­pled with the large for­mat ex­er­cises a mag­netic at­trac­tion – one of being lit­er­ally sucked into the blue sur­face. The two later art­works “Paint­ing” and “Paint­ing I–III” fur­ther in­ten­sify this re­duc­tion.

Wall or space?

Miró often painted large pic­to­r­ial for­mats as trip­tychs or tri­par­tite im­ages. The artist thus placed them in a Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion and em­pha­sized their mon­u­men­tal na­ture. The large sur­face they cover on the wall sug­gest that for the viewer the real space re­cedes, thus open­ing up a new imag­i­nary one.

This is par­tic­u­larly ap­par­ent in the three “Paint­ing” works made in 1973: The piece moves on the one hand in two di­men­sions through the pic­to­r­ial space pre­sented in black and white. The im­pres­sion is un­der­scored by the drip­ping traces of paint that al­ways point to the image’s char­ac­ter as a paint­ing. On the other, the viewer in­vari­ably sees a land­scape sharply ab­stract in terms of shapes and col­ors – and thus a three-di­men­sional space. With the in­ter­ac­tion of wall and space, Miró takes part in in­tro­duc­ing ab­stract paint­ing into three di­men­sions – one of the cen­tral themes of 20th cen­tury art.

All about the mural

Joan Miró, Femmes et oiseaux (detail), 1945

Painting has since the cave age been in a state of decadence.

Joan Miró

The wall as model

The wall is one of the old­est-ever media for im­ages. Long be­fore peo­ple de­vel­oped the first writ­ten let­ters they cov­ered cave walls with paint­ings, draw­ings and lines.

Miró and Josep Llorens Artigas studying prehistoric cave paintings in Altamira

The wall ex­erted a spe­cial fas­ci­na­tion on Miró. The sur­face on which time had left its mark, with tears, weeds, flak­ing plas­ter and faded paint was to in­flu­ence his oeu­vre greatly. A wall could be some­thing old, weather-beaten, and im­per­fect. He was mag­ne­tized by the beauty of decay and tried to imbue his paint­ings with the hap­tic prop­er­ties and tex­ture of wall sur­faces. He thus mixed paints with sand, plas­ter, straw or ce­ment to give the sur­face as tex­tured a qual­ity as pos­si­ble. He con­sid­ered mis­takes to be quite de­sir­able in this re­gard: He once told a gal­lerist that it was not a prob­lem if dur­ing trans­porta­tion some of the ma­te­r­ial should de­tach it­self from the paint­ings as they then re­sem­bled walls even more. In 1935-6 he made three pieces en­ti­tled “Signs and Fig­u­ra­tions”. They de­pict fishes, stars, fig­ures and other forms re­duced to black con­tours. Miró used thinned oil paint for this pur­pose, ap­ply­ing it to sand­pa­per steeped in tar. As a re­sult, the paint­ings had the feel of graf­fiti on the plas­ter of a house wall.

It’s the material that counts […]. It’s the material that defines everything.

Joan Miró

Miró in his studio working on a ceramic mural.

Experiments in ceramics

In the years 1955–59 Miró ded­i­cated him­self ex­clu­sively to ce­ram­ics, as part of which he cre­ated re­mark­able wall paint­ings with tiles. The “Wall of the Moon” and the al­most 15-me­ter-long “Wall of the Sun” for the UN­ESCO HQ in Paris were the first of a se­ries of large-for­mat wall pieces for pub­lic spaces.

Miró often started work­ing on his ce­ramic wall pic­tures with vague, very small sketches. One ex­cep­tion: the two walls in the UN­ESCO Head­quar­ters in Paris. For them, true-to-scale paper drafts have sur­vived that give a clear im­pres­sion of the fin­ished pieces. On the floor of his stu­dio Miró trans­posed these ideas onto the tiles – laid out in the size of the fin­ished wall. These were then fired once to per­ma­nently fix the col­ors, and then a sec­ond time in order to give the sur­face a uni­form glaze. The final col­ors only emerged after the fir­ing, so that the ce­ramic pieces al­ways in­volved an el­e­ment of sur­prise. Miró con­sid­ered these pieces as artis­tic col­lec­tive ef­forts: He al­ways worked with his life-long friend, the mas­ter ce­ram­ics maker Josep Llorens Ar­ti­gas and his son Joan Gardy Ar­ti­gas.

“The boy will go far”

Joan Miró never ever rested on his lau­rels. This shows a quote from the world fa­mous, then 85-year-old artist in which he with a smile iron­i­cally calls him­self a boy. In all phases of his life Miró cre­ated mas­ter­pieces be­cause he took to new means on ex­pres­sion the way a duck takes to water. Em­bark on a voy­age of dis­cov­ery through the SCHIRN ex­hi­bi­tion, where the large-for­mat pieces and wall paint­ings will offer you a new angle on Miró’s art – over and above his fa­mous, brightly col­ored dream-like paint­ings, which are ad­mired the world over.

Personal hint

Joan Miró, Tête de Georges Auric, 1929

Which one can only glean from the original:

THE FASCINATION OF MATERIAL

Many of the de­tails of Miró’s treat­ment of sur­faces can­not be re­pro­duced by dig­i­tal means on-screen. Mak­ing it very worth­while to view the ma­te­ri­als as they ap­pear in the orig­i­nals – in the SCHIRN ex­hi­bi­tion. This is es­pe­cially true of the “Head of Georges Auric”, made in 1929.

The por­trait of the French com­poser is for­mally speak­ing re­duced the vey min­i­mum of lines re­quired to draw his pro­file. It seems to con­sist solely of black and beige-col­ored sur­faces. How­ever, if you look at it close up you soon see that the black back­ground and the mas­sive eye rest as thick mass on the back­ing. The whole is a col­lage of paper and tar sup­ple­mented with a few lines in black ink.

The work was pro­duced in a phase in the late 1920s and early 1930s when Miró was ex­per­i­ment­ing with un­usual ma­te­ri­als in order to over­come con­ven­tional paint­ing. With his ce­ramic tile pic­tures he later sought to lib­er­ate art from the con­straints of easels. Miró cre­ated a three-di­men­sional form of the tra­di­tional two-di­men­sional paint­ing.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

ONLINE TICKETS

Go straight into the exhibition without waiting!

VISIT

Opening hours, getting to us, guided tours, and much more besides – all at a glance

MINISCHIRN

While you enjoy the exhibition, the children can make their very own discoveries!

AUDIOGUIDE

Spoken by Johanna Wokalek

FUNDACIÓ JOAN MIRÓ

Learn more about Mirós old Studio in La Palma de Mallorca

CATALOG

The richly illustrated exhibiRon catalog about Miró wall painRngs with an essay by Joan Punyet Miró

FOLLOW THE SCHIRN

#MIROMIRO
The digitorial is kindly supported by
Digitorial design and programming:
Scholz & Volkmer

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOAN MIRÓ

Deux oiseaux de proie, 29 May, 1973: © Fun­dació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Con­stel­la­tions, 1959: © Pri­vate col­lec­tion. Foto: Gabriel Ramon; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

La Ferme, 1921/22: © Na­tional Gallery of Art, Wash­ing­ton, D.C.; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture, 1936: © Nah­mad Col­lec­tion, Switzer­land; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture, sum­mer 1936: © Nah­mad Col­lec­tion, Schweiz; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Paysan cata­lan à la gui­tare, 1924: © Fun­dación Colección Thyssen-Borne­misza, Madrid; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Dra­peau es­pag­nol, 1925: © Pri­vate col­lec­tion Switzer­land. Foto: Peter Schälchli, Zürich; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Tête de Femme, 1939: © Nah­mad Col­lec­tion, Switzer­land; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture, 1925: © Pri­vate col­lec­tion; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture (La Magie de la couleur), 1930: © The Menil Col­lec­tion, Hous­ton. Foto: Hickey-Robert­son; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Bleu, 1925: © Foto: Ga­lerie Maeght, Paris; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture, 1953: © Solomon R. Guggen­heim Mu­seum, New York; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Bleu I–III, 4 March, 1961: © Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais. Fotos: Philippe Migeat; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture I, 27 July, 1973: © Archivio Fo­tografico Museo Na­cional Cen­tro de Arte Reina Sofía; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture II, 27 July, 1973: © Archiv Suc­cessió Miró; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture III, 27 July, 1973: © Archivio Fo­tografico Museo Na­cional Cen­tro de Arte Reina Sofía; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Femmes et oiseaux, 1945: © Würth Col­lec­tion; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture, around 1973: © Arxiu Fo­togràfic de la Fun­dació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mal­lorca. Foto: Joan Ramon Bonet & David Bonet; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Pein­ture, around 1973: © Arxiu Fo­togràfic de la Fun­dació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mal­lorca. Foto: Joan Ramon Bonet & David Bonet; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

Pein­ture, 1974: © Arxiu Fo­togràfic de la Fun­dació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mal­lorca. Foto: Joan Ramon Bonet & David Bonet; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Signes et fig­u­ra­tions, 31 De­cem­ber, 1935: © Pri­vate col­lec­tion; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Signes et fig­u­ra­tions, 1936: © Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Signes et fig­u­ra­tions, 1936: © Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Mur du soleil (Ma­que­tte Mur de l’UN­ESCO), around 1957: © Arxiu Fo­togràfic de la Fun­dació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mal­lorca. Foto: Joan Ramon Bonet & David Bonet; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Tête de Georges Auric, 1929: © Kun­sthaus Zürich; Suc­cessió Miró/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Man Ray: Joan Miró, around 1930: © MAN RAY TRUST/ ADAGP/ Te­lim­age – 2016/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Miró and Josep Llorens Ar­ti­gas study­ing pre­his­toric cave paint­ings in Al­tamira, March 1957: © Fo­toarchiv F. Català-Roca – Arxiu Fo­togràfic de L’Arxiu His­toric Col•legi d’Ar­qui­tectes de Catalunya.

Miró in his stu­dio pro­duc­ing a ce­ramic mural, 1971/72: © Fo­toarchiv F. Català-Roca – Arxiu Fo­togràfic de L’Arxiu His­toric Col•legi d’Ar­qui­tectes de Catalunya.

Fur­ther pho­tographs: Schirn Kun­sthalle Frank­furt.

AUDIO FILE

Quoted from the ex­hi­bi­tion cat­a­log „Joan Miró“. Hg.: Kun­sthaus Zürich; Zürich 1986; S. 27. Record­ing: 4-Real In­ter­me­dia GmbH, Of­fen­bach, 2015.

QUOTATIONS

“I want to mur­der paint­ing”: quoted from the ex­hi­bi­tion cat­a­log „Joan Miró. Mauer – Fries – Wand­bild“. Hg.: Kun­sthaus Zürich; Mu­nich: 2015; S. 17.

“I have with­drawn into my­self […]”: quoted from Janis Mink: „Miró“; Cologne: 1993; S. 17.

“Blue back­grounds […]”: quoted from the ex­hi­bi­tion cat­a­log „Joan Miró. Mauer – Fries – Wand­bild“. Hg.: Kun­sthaus Zürich; Mu­nich: 2015; S. 38.

“Paint­ing is […]”: quoted from the ex­hi­bi­tion cat­a­log „Joan Miró. Mauer – Fries – Wand­bild“. Hg.: Kun­sthaus Zürich; Mu­nich: 2015; S. 52.

“It’s the ma­te­r­ial […]”: quoted from M. Row­ell (Hg.): „Joan Miró: Se­lected Writ­ings and In­ter­views”; Lon­don: 1987; S. 219.