Palm,
For Joan Miró, finding possibilities in materials found without prior search, glimpsing the value of the accident, was almost necromancy: I use things found by divine chance, iron, stones, as I use a schematic sign drawn by chance on paper or an accident that also occurred by chance. It is only this, this magical spark, that counts in art.
“The magical spark” is, precisely, the title of one of the four exhibitions that Palma has hosted, since last summer and with the common epigraph of “Paysage Miró”, to pay tribute to Joan Miró, who died there in 1983 after almost three decades of creation on the island. Josep Lluis Sert designed a dream workshop for him there that today is part of the Pilar i Joan Miró Foundation, an institution that has six thousand works by this author.
Under the curatorship of Antònia Maria Perelló, director of the Fundació, “The Magic Spark” proposes us to contemplate the whole of Miró’s production, from the paintings close to the realism of his beginnings to his bronze sculptures, passing through the collages and assemblages, his ceramics and tapestries, paying attention to those crushes that the author of The farmhouse He experimented with objects, colors, sounds, documents, colors and shapes.
These materials could arouse a quick attraction; As for his work spaces, he needed more time to make them his own: their creation required conducive atmospheres. One way to become familiar with them was precisely to surround yourself with sparks: incorporate found objects, hang press clippings, drawings or postcards of diverse origin and, in short, surround yourself with your own universe of shapes and images. That universe extended to the outside of his studios, where he used to place a large cart wheel or tools and belongings characteristic of the field work with which he felt very identified. They were also a reminder of his origin: his father was a blacksmith from Cornudella (Tarragona) and the artist would spend long periods of time in the nearby town of Montroig since he went there in his youth to recover from an illness. He settled in the family farmhouse with reluctance, but ended up trapped by the place.
This exhibition also proposes us to stop where he worked. In the so-called Taller Sert many of his Mallorcan canvases saw the light of day (more than a hundred were there when, in 1975, Georges Raillard, who was director of the French Institute in Barcelona, visited him), while in Son Boter, his other island workshop, he carried out his graffiti in charcoal. Strictly speaking, he not only made them in his workplace, but also in the kitchen or pantry, and these compositions would be preparatory to the large-sized sculptures in which he was used at the same time and which are also part of “The Magic Spark.”
But apart from the great works, we will be able to look at its sources of multiple origins, from Naranjito to Mesopotamia: newspaper clippings, postcards and images hanging on thumbtacks will come our way, siurellswork utensils, containers, various figurines, stones and twigs on shelves and furniture, Mycenaean masks, idols from other civilizations…
It will not be difficult to think, given this profusion of possibilities, in the motley wunderkammerthe cabinets of wonders of the collectors who, in the Renaissance and Baroque, treasured all kinds of objects from half the world in visible furniture or behind small doors and drawers. They represented early attempts to classify the wealth of the world and were open, in addition to art, to science and the rites of superstition. Perhaps Sert remembered them when he designed for his friend a display case with multiple shelves in which Miró placed snail shells, toys, handmade or manufactured figures.
However, the commissioner defends, these accumulations of belongings of all conditions had more to do with the unfinished Atlas Mnemosyne by Aby Warburg, infinite cartography of relationships between images and symbols that the German historian gave shape to in the second half of the 1920s. It was an attempt to “order” the cosmos and highlight the survival of forms; With these multiform objects, Miró also intended to spur his creative spirit, just as other authors, such as Francis Bacon or Gerhard Richter, would do in not too distant dates.
For the Catalan there were more sparks, in any case: those offered by his friends, artists or not; books, poems, music, nature. They were treasures that he added to his compositions, which is why Joan Prats pointed out: When I pick up a stone, it remains a stone; When Joan Miró takes it, he becomes a Miró.
“Paysage Miró: The magic spark”
MIRÓ MALLORCA FOUNDATION
Saridakis Street, 29
Palm
From August 1, 2025 to January 11, 2026
