MIRÓ POEM - Fundación MAPFRE

MIRÓ POEM

  03 . 06 — 29 . 08 . 2021

Miró Poem is the unveiling of an intimate relationship and a
struggle : the struggle of Joan Miró’s ( 1893-1983 ) work with the po-
etic word. The bond between Miró and poetry would grow incessant-
ly and take on very diverse forms from 1917 onward, a time when the
young artist regularly attended the poetic cenacles in Barcelona—a
city that was emerging within the context of European culture—and
became subscribed to Nord-Sud magazine—a publication that was
the bastion for the renovation of French poetry and united several
generations of poets—. Said bond manifested itself in such a variety
of ways that Miró would even claim he made no distinction between
painting and poetry.

Joan Miró
Nord-Sud, 1917
Collection Adrien Maeght,
Saint-Paul
© Photo Galerie Maeght, Paris

In Miró’s work, poetry was not a source, a narrative excuse or
a diffuse search for lyrical inspiration allowing him to apply themes
to his paintings; on the contrary, from the 1920’s onward ( when the
artist had already established himself in Paris and had become asso-
ciated with Surrealism ), poetry became the underlying continuum
for the grounds from which his production germinated. Conscious
of treading through “ dangerous paths ”, as he alluded to in his letter
from 1923, Miró tried to incorporate the way of the poets into artis-
tic creation: from the suggestiveness of onomatopoeias to the infinite
inventiveness of the metaphor; from visual rhyme to a literal appli-
cation of linguistic symbols onto the canvas ; from the veiling of lan-
guage to syntactical games and the dismemberment of words. Para-
doxically, this risky approximation to the literary world allowed him
to take the first steps toward what he would later define as “ the as-
sassination of painting ”: escaping the limits that have traditionally
been imposed on the medium. In this sense, in a letter written to his
friend, the poet Michel Leiris, in 1924, Miró bluntly stated : “ this is
hardly painting, but I don’t give a damn”.

Joan Miró
Peinture ( Femme, tige, coeur ), 1925
Painting “ Woman, Stem, Heart ”
Private Collection
© Joan-Ramon Bonet / David Bonet

Joan Miró
Dessin-Poème « L ’été », 1937
Drawing-poem “ Summer ”
Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona
( FJM 3495 )
Photo: FotoGasull

      The exhibition is articulated through two moments in Miró’s
career that act as its poles : on the one hand, the 1920’s and 1930’s,
when the artist applied a process of distillation parallel to the strip-
ping of words in poetry and began to develop his own poetic projects;
on the other, at the end of the 1960’s, when in light of his interest for
concrete poetry, conceptual art and other phenomena like Lettrism,
Miró began to incorporate language into his work in unusual ways,
even considering ( and titling ) his paintings poems, literally. Exam-
ples from both these moments are on display in a selection that in-
cludes a wide range of mediums: painting, drawing and illustrated
books ; the latter of which is a format that became a true laboratory
for comparing himself to poets and one from which Miró was able to
study the articulation between word and image, as well as a place
where the artist could develop his poetic writing; which is not so well
known and has enigmatic links to his artistic work. The combination
of painting and poetry offers a vision of an artist that is protean and
immeasurable in his totality, much like how the meanings of words
become ungraspable in the hands of a poet.

           Carlos Martín — Exhibition curator

Curator
                                                               c/
Carlos Martín                                                       Gé
                                                                      no                               Plaza de Colón
                                                                        va

Fundación mapfre
Paseo de Recoletos, 23
28004 Madrid
Tel. 915 816 100                                   c / Bárb                                           • Biblioteca Nacional
                                                           ara de
cultura@fundacionmapfre.org                                         Bragan
                                                                             za

                                                  Fundación MAPFRE •

                                                                                           s  oleto
Dates
3 June to 29 August 2021

                                                                                        de Rec
Opening times

                                                                                  Paseo
Mondays ( except public holidays ) : 2pm to 8pm
Tuesdays to Saturdays : 11am to 8pm
Sundays and public holidays : 11am to 7pm                                                               c / A lcalá
( Last access : 30 minutes before closing time.                                 a
                                                                          Plaz les
Visitors must leave the galleries 10 minutes                                  ibe
                                                                         de C
before closing time )

Ticket prices
Standard : 5 €
Reduced : 3 €
Free entry : Mondays ( except public holidays )

Guided tours
7€
Times and booking : on this web page

Audio guide
Spanish

Bookshop
LAIE. Tel. 911 703 851
fmapfre@laie.es

Tell us your opinion of the exhibition:
#ExpoMiróPoema
                                                                         Cover:
       fundacionmapfrecultura                                            Joan Miró
                                                                         Poème iii, May 17th 1968
       @mapfrecultura                                                    Poem iii
                                                                         Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona
       @mapfrecultura                                                    ( FJM 4708 )
                                                                         Photo: Jaume Blassi
https://exposiciones.fundacionmapfre.org/
ExpoMiróPoema/                                                           © Successió Miró 2021

Exhibition organised by
Fundación MAPFRE with
the special collaboration
of Fundació Joan Miró,
Barcelona.