BIOGRAPHIES
Joan Miró
1893 Joan Miró is born in Barcelona.
1913-20 He studies drawing at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc, where Antoni Gaudí also attends classes.
1921 He moves to Paris temporarily and becomes involved in the avant-garde movements. He soon becomes one of the most salient Surrealist artists.
1937 In an interview with Georges Duthuit, Miró speaks of his admiration for Antoni Gaudí, pointing out the architect’s interest in identifying with nature through his work.
1942-43 Without abandoning painting, Miró begins to show an interest in sculpture and takes notice of Gaudí’s work with sculptural work.
1955 He is commissioned to produce the ceramic murals for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. He draws inspiration for the project from prehistoric art, the Romanesque period and Gaudí.
1960 Miró designs the cover for the book Antoni Gaudí, written by James Johnson Sweeney and Josep Lluís Sert.
1963-64 Jointly with Josep Llorens Artigas, Miró works on the ceramic pieces for the Laberint at the Fondation Maeght in Saint Paul-de-Vence.
1976-82 He draws inspiration from Gaudí’s use of the trencadís broken tile technique for some of his public art pieces: Mosaic del Pla de l’Os (1976), Sol, lluna i una estrella (Miss Chicago) (1981) and Dona i ocell (1981-82).
1979 As a tribute to Gaudí, he produces the prints for the series “Gaudí”, “Enrajolats” and “Gran rodona”.
1983 He dies in Palma de Mallorca.
Antoni Gaudí
1852 Antoni Gaudí is born in Reus or Riudoms (Tarragona).
1873 He begins his architecture training at the Escola Provincial d’Arquitectura in Barcelona.
1883 He is commissioned to continue construction of the Sagrada Família church, the most personal and ambitious project of his entire lifetime. The changes he proposes are affected by difficulties in securing donations.
1884 His patron Eusebi Güell commissions him to design the pavilions and the gates for the Güell property at Can Feliu, in Barcelona. Two years later, he begins the Palau Güell, and in 1898 he starts to build the Colònia Güell crypt, where construction continues until 1915.
1888 He completes his first project as an architect, Casa Vicens, in the Gràcia neighbourhood in Barcelona.
1900 Again, under the patronage of Eusebi Güell, he begins working on the Park Güell, a garden city project that was never completed as such, but has continued to embody his capacity for risk and innovation until today.
1906 After the Casa Calvet (1900) and Casa Batlló (1906) projects, he begins Casa Milà, known as “La Pedrera”, his third and last residential building, where his expressive power and his freedom of design reach their peak.
1922 Congress of Spanish Architects in Barcelona, in which Gaudí’s architecture is highlighted.
1926 He dies suddenly in Barcelona in an accident, leaving the Sagrada Família church unfinished.
Joaquim Gomis
1902 Joaquim Gomis is born in Barcelona and shows an interest in photography from an early age.
1932 Jointly with Joan Prats and Josep Lluís Sert, he creates Amics de l’Art Nou (ADLAN), an association aimed at promoting avant-garde art. He meets Miró, with whom he will end up sharing a lifelong friendship. After the Spanish Civil War, Gomis continues to promote art ventures in Catalonia through Club 49.
1948 Exposition des oeuvres récentes de Joan Miró at Galerie Maeght in Paris. The Mas Miró photo project, in which Gomis captures the artist’s work and his creative environment, is shown for the first time. Alfred H. Barr, Collections Director at MoMA in New York, requests copies for the museum’s archives.
1952 Celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Gaudí’s birth, the Amics de Gaudí (Friends of Gaudí) association is founded to raise awareness of the architect’s artistic, human, and spiritual facets. The first Gomis-Prats fotoscop is published, focusing on Antoni Gaudí: La Sagrada Família. It is followed by Park Güell (1966), Crypt of the Colònia Güell (1967) and La Pedrera (1971).
1956 Gaudí exhibition at the Saló del Tinell in Barcelona, organized by Amics de Gaudí, with the large-format photographs of the architect’s work that Gomis had taken in the 1940s.
1957 MoMA asks Gomis-Prats to have their photographs shown at the Gaudí exhibition the museum organizes in New York that year.
1959 Gomis-Prats publish the fotoscop titled Atmósfera Miró, the first one to feature Joan Miró, based on the Mas Miró photo project.
1975 The Fundació Joan Miró opens to the public and Gomis is its first president.
1991 He dies in Barcelona.
PANELS AND EXHIBIT LABELS
General text
Joan Miró and Joaquim Gomis always admired Antoni Gaudí’s work. They each, in their own field, knew how to capture the architect’s creative sense and restore its modernity.
From very early on, Miró showed the same kind of interest in nature that Gaudí had done and, just like the architect, achieved a synthesis in his artistic work based on the observation of natural elements. When, in the forties and fifties, he sought to go beyond the discipline of painting, he became interested in the sculptural aspect in Gaudí’s work and in his technical procedures, as well as his desire to associate art with life. Towards the end of his career, Miró wanted to pay homage to the architect with several series of engravings.
In turn, in the forties, Gomis began photographing Gaudí’s work and Miró’s creative atmospheres. His ability to see the architect’s production by photographing it in detail, and combining with overall plans, was key to highlighting the modernity in Gaudí’s work, and simultaneously to revealing the shared interests between the architect and Miró.
The fotoscops of Gaudí and Miró
By using the photographs that Joaquim Gomis took of Gaudí and Miró’s production an important photographic archive was created that helped promote both of their creations. The initiative, carried out by the photographer himself along with Joan Prats, led to the publication of the so-called fotoscops, bringing together the photos in different editions. Prats took on the selection of Gomis’s images and then how to order them in a rhythmic sequence.
The fotoscops originated in the slide projections, known as the magic lantern, which always feature the idea of movement and continuity. La Sagrada Familia de Antonio Gaudí (1952) is the first in a series of fotoscops about the architect, in this case published on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. Atmósfera Miró (1959), dedicated to the artist’s creative atmospheres, emerges from a selection of images taken at the artist’s farmhouse near Mont-roig, which Gomis and Prats used to give a new interpretation to Miró’s artwork in relation to the earth and popular art.
Sculpture
Joan Miró’s first sculptures in bronze were made at the Gimeno foundry using the modelling technique. He reproduced images of a mythical traditional Mediterranean world, quite similar in appearance to the stairwells, chimneys and ventilation towers on the rooftop terrace of La Pedrera, where Gaudí had wanted to test his sculptural abilities.
Miró took inspiration from the moulding technique that Gaudí had used on the Naixement (Nativity) façade of the Sagrada Família, whereby the elements to be used were directly moulded in plaster.
The objects featured in Miró’s sculpture are taken mainly from the natural surroundings or traditional culture. Once he had cast them in bronze, using the lost-wax process, he assembled the pieces together to bring to life characters reminiscent of idols from ancient civilizations.
Estela de doble cara (Double-sided monolith), 1956
Miró wanted his sculptural work, once cast in bronze, to be returned to nature, the origin of most of the objects which he used to create his sculptures. This practice also applied to his ceramics. Sometimes, he even let nature leave its mark upon the sculpture. These marks, like those applied by the artist, endow the work with its magical character.
Public and monumental artwork
Miró understood art as an expression linked to everyday life. Thus, he sought to work in public spaces. Through ceramics and sculpture, he was able to put this idea into practice; and prehistoric art, Romanesque art and Gaudí were his references. Park Güell was a source of inspiration when he created, along with the ceramist Josep Llorens Artigas, the murals at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1956-1957) and, later on, the ceramics and sculptures at the Laberint (Labyrinth) at Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul- de-Vence (1963). Just as Gaudí knew how to adapt the project to the terrain where he was building the park, Miró wanted his work to integrate with the architecture and the landscape.
The need to work with weather-resistant materials also led Miró and Artigas to use Gaudí’s trencadís technique, which in turn made the artwork very colourful.
In homage to Gaudí
“Gaudí” series, 1979
Towards the end of his career, and in appreciation of everything that Gaudí had meant for him, Miró decided to pay homage to the architect with several series of engravings. He wanted to test his abilities in each of the series and with the help of the master engraver, Joan Barbarà, he explored the great potential this technique offered. The largest series is entitled “Gaudí” (1979) featuring a series of fabulous characters that he structures using the graphism of black and splashes of colour, with a clear insistence on curved and undulating lines.
“Gran rodona” series (Big circle), 1979
While the series “Enrajolats” (Tiles) seems to be a recognition by Miró of the trencadís technique, “Gran rodona” recalls the impact he experienced upon discovering this shape at the entrance to Park Güell when he was preparing the murals for the UNESCO building in Paris. He would subsequently use this form on the pavement with the Mosaic del Pla de l’Os.