.Miró - The daydreamer
Aimé Maeght and Joan Miro at the Maeght Foundation, 1968
It is difficult to dissociate the name of Miró from that of Maeght. Even more than the other artists, Joan Miró was the close one. “I met Miró in 1947 during the surrealism exhibition. Tristan Tzara brought it to my house so that I could publish Parler Seul , illustrated with lithographs by Miró. It turns out that at that time, Pierre Loeb, his dealer since 1934, who had exhibited his wild period on rue des Beaux-Arts, was ready to abandon his contract. I have therefore taken up and repurchased his work since 1939.” His first exhibition, where thirty-nine paintings and forty-nine ceramics were shown, took place in 1948. It was, of course, Tristan Tzara who signed the text of Behind the Mirror : “Joan Miró and the emerging question”. From this first exhibition, Maeght represents him. The dealer and the artist will never leave each other. Rarely has an artist, over such a long period, been so inhabited by the same elementary mythology, the same light poetry, creating a strange and universal language. Miró, throughout his work, never ceases to invent, to discover, even attempting, sometimes, to assassinate his own creation. Thus he allows himself to abandon his conquests to resume his path towards the unknown, beyond any pictorial aesthetic. Miró is both a poet and an explorer. When he paints the three Blues , he tries to approach the beauty of the sky. Nothing more elementary, nothing more free.
Miró exhibition at the Maeght Gallery, rue Saint Merri, 1993
In 1953, the Catalan architect José Luis Sert built Miró's workshop on the island of Majorca. During the Maeghts' first visit to the Miró family in Palma, at the end of the 1950s, Aimé discovered the design of architecture in the service of an idea. In front of this highly modern construction, Aimé remembers being impressed by the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris. In a building designed by José Luis Sert, the public discovered The Catalan Peasant in Revolt painted in situ by Miró and Guernica , a monumental painting by Picasso which faced Calder's Mercury Fountain . Sert will be the architect of the Maeght Foundation (1964), as he will be that of the Miró Foundation in Barcelona (1975). And we find in these places all the spirit of the Catalan master. At the Gallery as at the Foundation, exhibitions follow one another, presenting paintings, sculptures, engravings, tapestries, ceramics and editions…
Joan Miró at the Maeght Foundation, 1971
Joan Miró, Gargoyle, 1968
Miró's appetite for any new medium is insatiable. Aimé supports him and puts all the technical means at his disposal. Each year he stays several months in Saint-Paul with the Maeghts. Aimé built engraving and ceramic workshops there, equipped with traditional Korean kilns. Miró feels at home there. In homage to the craftsmen and the equipment made available to him, he named the extraordinary press after his wife, “La Pilar”. For the Catalan genius, Adrien also set up a workshop in Paris dedicated to prints. Miró was, without a doubt, the most prolix of engravers, possessing this intelligence and this instinct for the profession better than anyone else. In total, more than fifteen hundred titles of engravings and lithographs will come out of the Maeght presses, including the unusual Adonides , a work born from complicity and harmony with his friend Prévert. The families, children and grandchildren of the poet, the painter and the Maeghts, meet every year in Saint-Paul.
Joan Miró making an original etching in the garden in Saint-Paul, 1973
Speaking alone, bibliophile book by Joan Miro and Tristan Tzara published in 1948 by Maeght Editeur, Paris
Florence and Yoyo Maeght with Joan Miro at Mas Bernard, 1971
Yoyo Maeght and Joan Miró at the Maeght Foundation, July 1966
In the summer of 1968, by boat off the coast of Cap d'Antibes, Miró immersed a monumental ceramic in homage to the Goddess of the Sea . In 1978, with his usual generosity, he donated two hundred and twenty recent drawings to three collections dear to him: the Marguerite and Aimé Maeght Foundation, the Georges-Pompidou Center and the Miró Foundation, in Barcelona.
Aimé Maeght and Joan Miró during the immersion of the Goddess of the Sea off the coast of Antibes, 1968
During the summer of 1979, the Foundation devoted a retrospective to him to celebrate his eighty-fiveth birthday. During the opening, his monumental stained glass window, the artist's first, is unveiled, installed on a covered terrace of the Foundation. In Miró's Labyrinth, La Claca, a Catalan troupe, performs Mori el Merma , a ludicrous farce that Miró enjoys. He applied himself to painting sets and costumes, a violent work, bursting with angry colors.
View of the show, Mori el Merma, farce performed by the Catalan troupe, La Claca, with sets and costumes by Joan Miro, Fondation Maeght.
View of the show, Mori el Merma, farce performed by the Catalan troupe, La Claca, with sets and costumes by Joan Miro, Fondation Maeght.
The final exhibition during his lifetime was presented by Adrien in 1983, accompanied by a text by André Frénaud. The life of this enchanter is written like poetry. He died on Christmas Eve 1983
“Joan Miró has, in his approach, something simple, true and natural, which we must find in his plastic fantasy and which certainly constitutes his charm. These sinuous lines, these floating shapes, these vivid spots of color have nothing concerted: chance seems to have arranged them, but it is a happy, graceful chance in which it is impossible not to recognize an intention; there is a presence there, and a presence full of intelligence and kindness.” Jean Cassou, Behind the Mirror , 1948.
Joan Miro, To Adrien Maeght, in homage to his work, May 12, 1965, oil pastel on paper, 37x28.5cm
“I think of Miró through the heavy earthquakes of the mind which at this time leave a thousand cracks after their passage without a single piece of the universe formally detaching itself. Rumbling wreck, sculpted figure, placid table no longer roll in the distance, are only crevices and fixed promises. I evoke Miró, inhabitant of the farm above, painting, engraving and busying himself, flush with the magical rock face. A cheerful painter, stripped of habits. On the sharpening wheel of happiness he is the sower of compensation and sparks. And in the folds of mourning there are beauties to revive Osiris. For a long time now, to this subtle fairground, celestial mechanics has shown its foliage, its labyrinth and its rides. And this April 12, 1961 I know Miró has an advantage. Doing better than a meteor isn't doing much when you're not burning. Miró blazes, runs, gives us and blazes.” René Char, Behind the Mirror , 1961.
Joan Miró in his studio, Barcelona, 1950
Joan Miró, For Aimé’s 70th birthday, 1975, mixed media on paper, 61x42cm
“1950. One evening, on Avenue de Messina, Miró said to me: “We need to get back into ceramics. Everyone indulges in it and most of them break their backs or rather don't break anything at all. They just had to continue to paint, without worrying about the particularities of ceramics, the materials, the colors, the enamels, above all the nature and the very spirit of this art. At most, in the domain of forms, they risked a few deformations, without creating new forms. It's time to strike a blow. We must now think about preparing an exhibition of our ceramic work.”” Josep Llorens Artigas, Behind the Mirror , 1956
Joan Miró, Great Character in Progress, 1956, ceramic
Josep Llorens Artigas, friend and ceramist of Joan Miro
The book La Saga Maeght by Yoyo Maeght, with dedication. Link here
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