museum origins 

The Miro Foundation is on Montjuic above the Greek theatre and not far from the Olympic Stadium. The Catalan artist wanted to create a space to inspire younger artists and to showcase his own works. Enlisting the help of old friends Joan Prats and Josep Luis Sert, they set about designing the space.

custom space designed

The building opened on June 10 1974 and was hailed as a new way to experience art, with the light airy spaces guiding the visitor from piece to piece.

The man himself was born on April 20 1893 and lived to an impressive 90 years old. His early works were modernist in style like the Painting of Toledo. At the beginning of the 1920’s Miro began to mix realism with subtle distortions. Cubism was clearly influencing his painting now. His most famous painting from this era is The Farm, bought in Paris by friend Earnst Hemmingway. (The writer later lost it in his divorce, but his ex-wife let him visit it)

its all going abstract

By 1923 Miro’s paintings got more and more abstract. Making use pictograms, he produced a key set of paintings including the Catalan Landscape (The Hunter). With a triangle for his head, angular lines for the body and arcs to represent a moustache, his journey into Surrealism had begun.

Miro continued to develop his unique style in paintings, collages and sculptures. He was at the vanguard of the Surrealism movement, but never became an ‘official’ member because he wanted to continue experimenting. Automatic drawing, Lyrical Abstraction and Colour Field painting all appear in his works, he even propsed a theoretical four dimensional-style!

top tip

If don’t fancy heading up onto Montjuic to visit the foundation you can still get your Miro dose and free of charge. Check out ‘Woman & Bird‘ in Park Miro and his colourful mosaic in Pla de l’Os on Las Ramblas.