Bay of Palma Tourism Guide - Joan Miro Biography

Miro Museum

The opportunity of seeing albeit a small collection of Miro's work, compared to the sister gallery in Barcelona, is not to be missed on a visit to Mallorca. Famous architects have worked on the great white building as well, including Josep Lluis Sert who designed Miro's studio, and later in the 1980s Rafael Moneo, the well-known architect, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a disciple of Josep Lluis Sert, who designed the new headquarters for the Pilar i Joan Miro Mallorca Foundation, in the setting of the grounds of Son Boter and Son Abrines where Miro lived the last years of his life. This building was opened in 1992 and is the main centre for displaying the 5000 works owned by the Foundation, as well as hosting exhibitions by other artists. The centre is really much more than a contemporary art gallery, it's a real cultural and artistic hub, a meeting place for artists, and space for workshops and learning.

The centre then is split into two, the Sert Studio and the Foundation's other buildings around Son Boter which is a late 17th century country house purchased by Miro in 1959. Most of Miro's work here is post 1960 as you'd expect, the focus here being his work done in Majorca. There's a selection of works on canvas including Oiseaux (1973), and there's a superb selection of Miro sculpture including the various Personnages. There's also a selection of engravings and etchings, as well as sketches.

Transport - Palma Buses 3 and 6 and Transabus Taxi, Summer visiting times (from 16th May to 15th September), Tuesday to Saturday from 10.00-19.00 hrs, Sundays and Public Holidays from 10.00-15.00 hrs. Closed Monday. Winter visiting times (from 16th September to 15th May), Tuesday to Saturday from 10.00 - 18.00 hrs. Sundays and Public Holidays from 10.00-15.00 hrs. Closed Monday. Check the Miro Museum website (right) for entrance price details.

Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miro (Miro Museum) Mallorca, C. Joan de Saridakis, 29, 07015 Palma, Balearic Islands, Spain Tel. 34-971-701420. Handicapped and Disabled Wheelchair access is good, except for Son Boter and the Miro workshops. Other services on-site include a guided visit, a cloakroom and a spacious car park. There's a great little cafe, plus a library with a focus obviously on Miro's work, but also contemporary art in general. There is also a wide area of gardens around the foundation.

Biography of Joan Miro

Joan Miro was born in Barcelona in 1893. The family's roots in the province of Tarragona and Majorca are, however, present throughout his work. His early paintings show the influences of Van Gogh, Cezanne, the Fauves, Cubism and Futurism. In Barcelona as a youth, he frequented the Galeries Dalmau, a centre for avant-garde art where, during the First World War, artists of international renown such as Francis Picabia gathered, and where Miro held his first solo exhibition in 1918. It was in 1918 too that he begun to develop a new, more detailed and calligraphic pictorial style. Following the example of other Catalan and Spanish artists, Miro visited Paris for the first time in 1920.

In Paris, he had his first studio at 45 Rue Blomet, in the same house as the painter Andre Masson. There he met up with a group of young poets and writers. These contacts and his reading of works by Apollinaire, Jarry, Lautreamont and Rimbaud, among others, led to a change in his pictorial language. He abandoned realism in favour of imagination, in an obvious desire to go beyond painting - an attitude that was close to that of the Surrealists. Towards the end of the twenties, Miro experienced a crisis in his painting and began to work on new art forms such as collage and assemblage.