Miró on Mallorca

From his childhood on, Mallorca was to be a second home for Joan Miro. His mother hailed from the island, as did his wife Pilar Juncosa. It became his permanent place of abode from the mid-fifties onwards, after he acquired a plot of land upon which he commissioned his friend Josep Lluris to build a large studio. He died there on the 25th of December 1983 at the age of 90. This study concerns itself primarily with the varied themes and techniques of the artist's later works painting, sculpture, prints and ceramics - which were all created, with the exception of the latter, in the four workshops of his residence Son Abrines. It was the clear light of Mallorca which especially fascinated Miro - the poetic blues of the sky and sea. In his sculpture, he was especially inspired by the artistic creativity of the island inhabitants, not to mention the agriculture and precipitous cliffs which give the landscape of Mallorca its unique quality. "A pitchfork, a fork that has been carefully made by peasants - that's very important to me", he once commented. From his youth on he was to collect objects typical of island life: ceramics, woven baskets and simple household pottery.
Above all, he loved the rustic style of the old Mallorcan house with its characteristic furniture. Such things were to influence his art more than any fluctuating fashions. "Folk art always moves me...In this art their are no tricks...it is so rich with possibilities." Barbara Catoir is the author of "Conversations with Antoni Tapies". Miro was born in Barcelona in 1893 and studied there at the Lonja School of Fine Arts from 1912 onwards, and in the private school of Francesc Gall. Miro lived on and off in Paris from 1920 to the outbreak of World War II; there he became friends with poets and artists within Surrealist and Dadaist circles. He exhibited alongside Picasso, Gonzales and Alexander Calder in the Spanish Pavilion of the World Exhibition in Paris during 1937. With the first major exhibition of his oeuvre at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1941, Miro was to see the blossoming of a fruitful relationship with the American art scene, which was to last until his death. Numerous works of his are to be found in American museums and private collections.