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 MiróNord-Sud, 1917Collection 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 MiróPeinture ( Femme, tige, coeur ), 1925Painting “ Woman, Stem, Heart ” Private Collection© Joan-Ramon Bonet / David Bonet

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

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

Fundación MAPFRE •

Plaza de Colón

c / Génova

c / Alcalá

c / Bárbara de Braganza

Plaza

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• Biblioteca Nacional

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

Curator Carlos Martín 

Fundación mapfre Paseo de Recoletos, 23 28004 Madrid Tel. 915 816 100cultura@fundacionmapfre.org

Dates 3 June to 29 August 2021

Opening times Mondays ( except public holidays ) : 2pm to 8pm Tuesdays to Saturdays : 11am to 8pm Sundays and public holidays : 11am to 7pm ( Last access : 30 minutes before closing time.Visitors must leave the galleries 10 minutes 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

https://exposiciones.fundacionmapfre.org/ExpoMiróPoema/

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Cover: Joan MiróPoème iii, May 17th 1968Poem iiiFundació Joan Miró, Barcelona ( FJM 4708 )Photo: Jaume Blassi

© Successió Miró 2021