The metro took us to the foot of the city's main hill. Montjuic - Jewish Mountain - is one of the main attractions of Barcelona. There was a Jewish cemetery, after which the hill got its name. The World Exhibition in 1929, then the Olympic Games in 1992, and a number of museums and sights gave the elevation above the city the character of an indispensable goal for every intending person.
First we got out of the metro and started to climb the steep street uphill. On the map it was written that Parelel metro station and Park Monžuik are connected by funicular. We asked a lady, and she told us with a smile that we had already covered almost half of the way. The entrance to the cable car is underground, in the same place as the entrance to the metro.
JUAN MIRO FOUNDATION
Thus, with our morning hike, we paid for the prejudice that the means of transport to the hill must have a starting station above ground. When we returned the same way, everything went smoothly. The funicular from the subway runs every ten minutes. And we are already in the middle of a completely different world compared to the colorful and bustling Barcelona. Park and cafes with a view of the city. From here, you can take the cable car to the fortress, but we will reach our goal on foot in a few minutes.
The Juan Miro Foundation is an endowment of the famous painter, which was built during his lifetime, in 1977. The architect was Miro's Barcelona friend and Corbusier's student, Joseph Luis Sert. That architecture, because of its clear lines and proportions, because of its Mediterranean airy structure, has remained eternally young.
We enter without any problems, it is still early and there is no crowd. And we are immediately faced with Miro's famous bright colors. I am especially attracted to his work, which is seven meters high and five meters wide. I looked at the explanation twice to check the dimensions.
Then I retreated step by step, until I found a solid vantage point, from which I took in the tapestry.
In 1977, together with the Spanish artist Josep Roja, Miro created a series of five tapestries made of jute, cotton, hemp and linen for the Foundation. Towards the end of his life, Miro again felt the need to connect with the original, rural mythology, with the craftsmanship of a number of generations. And with that he went back to his beginnings.
Together, this duo created perhaps the most famous tapestry in the world, which no longer exists. The two of them installed their monumental tapestry in the West Tower of New York's World Trade Center in 1974, so it too was destroyed in a terrorist attack in September 2001. But this one here, on Montjuic Hill, defies time with its vibrant colors.
SCULPTURE IN FOUR HANDS
In the rooms with white walls, I stop in front of the canvases that Miro bequeathed to his hometown. In fact, permanent setup is only a fraction of it.
There are a total of 11 works of art with the artist's signature in the Foundation's depots. 000 paintings, 240 sculptures. Nine tapestries. Four ceramic works, almost a total of graphic works and 175 drawings.
I stayed a little longer at the unusual sculpture. It was also created by Miro with another artist, Đozep Ljorens and Artigas.
And in 1956, Miro explored the possibilities of "anti-painting" - following the concept that the artist only draws from the collective unconscious. Of course, some recognizable symbols have moved from plane trees to ceramics.
While walking through the museum, I remembered my first encounter with the reproductions of the paintings of this magical Catalan. I was preparing the history of art for my master's studies in the sociology of culture in Belgrade. I was interested in all the revolutionary artistic currents of the last century. The texts generally gave more importance to Picasso. I liked what Miro did more. Like what the man he was friends with in Paris, Max Ernst, was doing.
MIRO AS A POET OF PAINTING
Jean-Louis Prat, a prominent curator of a series of major exhibition events in France, once said: “Miro is an inventor. He does not paint figuratively or abstractly. He is a poet who paints”.
In the last century, a wide audience often saw Mediterranean decorativeness in Miro. Pra decisively rejects it: "Miro was never decorative. He has a strong and innovative language. He is against any fanaticism, he expresses himself with a lot of freedom. With him, there is always that mixture of fantasy and seriousness".
"Figure in front of the sun", one of Miro's more famous paintings can serve as an example of the contradictions on which he based his art - lightness and depth, resistance and humor, earth and sky.
Back in the thirties of the last century, Miró's also famous compatriot Salvador Dali labeled Miró's art "too grandiose for the stupid world of our artists and intellectuals".
TRIBUTE TO REBELLION YOUTH
I linger longer in front of a painting that was created in 1973 and is called "May 1968." In that deceptive summer, Miro is 75 years old and lives in Paris. In his youth he was a sympathizer of the Spanish Republicans. He is not indifferent to student revolts either, and has sympathy for them.
He painted an artistic tribute to their rebellion, youth, energy and imagination when he was eighty years old. And the painting reveals the soul of a young artist.
It is impossible to list all the interesting encounters with the work of this artist that day. Although he died at a very old age in his house on the island of Majorca, he was buried in Barcelona. A large number of people accompanied him to the cemetery in 1983. I think that we shared time on this planet for 20 years. I am somewhat childishly proud of that.
Who would have thought that a world-famous artist had a hard time finding his way to art in his youth. The son of a jeweler and watchmaker showed a penchant for drawing from an early age. Father was against it. Miro became a bookkeeper while taking private art lessons along the way. One of the most famous painters of the last century worked for a while as a bookkeeper in a drugstore. Only when typhus threatened his life did his parents relent. He studied painting in Barcelona, then went to Paris, where he was influenced by the Fauvists, Cubists and finally, decisively, the Surrealists.
COFFEE YOUR MIDDLE
I realize that this Foundation is actually a worthy eternal home for the Catalan genius, who in the last period of his creativity exhibited "burnt paintings" as a protest against turning art into a profit-making enterprise.
It's time to sort out our impressions on the terrace of the museum cafe, which offers good cappuccino from Miro's yellow cups.
Then we go down to the museum souvenir shop. There I am tempted to take a few posters with reproductions of the artist's works, but I remember that there is no room for them in my luggage.
Then, in a series of graphic solutions that he signed, I came across a poster that he made for the seventy-fifth birthday of the Barcelona football club. Although it was back in 1974 - exactly half a century ago - this work also seems almost boyishly fresh. I am tempted to say that Miro's art with its lyrical abstraction and bright colors arose from the same spirit as the artistic approach to the game of football that made the club from the Catalan metropolis famous. From the spirit of Mediterranean playfulness and love for life.
Before leaving the museum complex, I once again visit the sculpture behind which Barcelona can be seen deep below, like a huge beehive stranded on the Mediterranean coast. "Sun, Moon and One Star" is actually a smaller version of the original sculpture, which is 12 meters high and is located in Chicago. It is believed that Miro indicated the goddess Earth in her. As always when the author is this man, in the sculpture there is something mysterious, magical, from poetry and subconsciousness translated into our reality.
NEOLITHIC POSTCARD
This is a lively place, which disproves preconceptions about museum boredom. Several months a year, the Foundation organizes "Nights of Music" - so Miro's works are accompanied by tones. In addition, since 2007, the Foundation has been awarding an annual prize for painting, which is of course called the Juan Miro. The winner is presented with a check for 70 euros, and is provided with an exhibition with a monograph. It is a kind of promotion of the contemporary painter to the rank of fantasy knight.
At the exit from the building, we are greeted silently by a bronze figure, which at first glance cannot be determined whether it is male or female. Until you notice the crotch erect bulge. Miro created it in 1970 and called it "Character". His sense of humor spoke very directly here.
In his mature creative period, Miro devoted more time to sculpture. He considered that painting, which gave him world fame, was "more conventional" compared to sculptures, with which he could three-dimensionally create "a real fantastic world of real monsters." According to some interpretations, this sculpture represents the Neolithic god Skuril.
Such sculptures by Miro remind me of some works by Max Ernst or memorial sculptures by Bogdan Bogdanović. It is an international surrealist manuscript rooted in folk art and mythology.
The foundation conceived the current exhibition along Miro's obsessive themes, namely the relationship with the land, the will to overcome conventional painting, the need for anonymity, war violence and escape from it, poetry, silence and anti-painting.
We spent this morning in Barcelona in the right place. I rarely want to go back to the constants I've seen before. But to the bronze sculpture that follows us with its gaze as we leave, I say to myself - see you again.
Bonus video:
