Description
The Fundació Joan Miró is the museum of Joan Miró's art, on the hill of Montjuïc in Barcelona: a bright white building with terraces and courtyards, packed with paintings, sculptures, drawings and tapestries by the Catalan master. Most of the works are his own gifts.
Miró did not want a shrine to himself. He set up the foundation in 1968 with his friend Joan Prats, and the idea was a place where younger artists could experiment with contemporary art. His own paintings came too, of course.
The collection follows him from the early landscapes of 1917, such as the Hermitage of San Juan Huerta, to the large canvases of his later years. Highlights include The Morning Star (1940), part of the Constellations series, the Barcelona Series of 1944 and the colorful Tapestry of the Fundació.
The building is a work of art as well. Miró's close friend Josep Lluís Sert designed it with courtyards and terraces that lead visitors naturally from room to room. It opened on 10 June 1975, and an auditorium and a library were added in 1986.
Look for Espai 13, a space set aside for young experimental artists, as Miró wished. The museum also holds works by Chillida, Rothko, Tàpies, Magritte and others, and the terraces have sculptures and views over the city.
Then there is Alexander Calder's Mercury Fountain. The Spanish Republic commissioned it for its pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair, as a companion to Picasso's Guernica, in memory of the siege of Almadén and its mercury mines by Franco's troops.
Real mercury flows in it, and mercury is poisonous, so it stands behind glass. It is one of the most unusual works on the hill, silent and silvery.
Since 2007 the foundation has also given the Joan Miró Prize to a contemporary artist every other year, with a purse of 70,000 euros.
Miró did not want a shrine to himself. He set up the foundation in 1968 with his friend Joan Prats, and the idea was a place where younger artists could experiment with contemporary art. His own paintings came too, of course.
The collection follows him from the early landscapes of 1917, such as the Hermitage of San Juan Huerta, to the large canvases of his later years. Highlights include The Morning Star (1940), part of the Constellations series, the Barcelona Series of 1944 and the colorful Tapestry of the Fundació.
The building is a work of art as well. Miró's close friend Josep Lluís Sert designed it with courtyards and terraces that lead visitors naturally from room to room. It opened on 10 June 1975, and an auditorium and a library were added in 1986.
Look for Espai 13, a space set aside for young experimental artists, as Miró wished. The museum also holds works by Chillida, Rothko, Tàpies, Magritte and others, and the terraces have sculptures and views over the city.
Then there is Alexander Calder's Mercury Fountain. The Spanish Republic commissioned it for its pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair, as a companion to Picasso's Guernica, in memory of the siege of Almadén and its mercury mines by Franco's troops.
Real mercury flows in it, and mercury is poisonous, so it stands behind glass. It is one of the most unusual works on the hill, silent and silvery.
Since 2007 the foundation has also given the Joan Miró Prize to a contemporary artist every other year, with a purse of 70,000 euros.