Barcelona Guide
Montjuïc
Fundació Joan Miró
Opening time: Tues– Sat 10am–7pm, July– Sept until 8pm, Thurs until 9.30pm, Sun & hols 10am–2.30pm
Price: €8, exhibitions €4, price includes audio-guide
Telephone: 934 439 470
Website: www.fundaciomiro-bcn.org
Montjuïc's highlight is the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona's most adventurous, and most attractive, art museum. The impressive white modernist structure is set in lovely gardens overlooking the city. Joan Miró (1893–1983) was one of the greatest Catalan artists. He had his first exhibition in 1918 and subsequently spent his summers in Catalunya and the rest of the time in France, before moving to Mallorca in 1956, where he died. His friend, Josep-Luis Sert, designed the building that houses the museum, which comprises a permanent collection of paintings, graphics, tapestries and sculptures donated by Miró himself and ranging from 1914 to 1978.
The paintings and drawings are instantly recognizable, among the chief links between Surrealism and abstract art. Miró showed a childlike delight in colours and shapes and developed a free, highly decorative style. Although much of the collection isdevoted to his later works, there are early Realist works from before the mid-1920s, like the effervescent Portrait of a Young Girl (1919). A collection donated by Miró's widow demonstrates his preoccupations in the 1930s and 1940s, when he began his Constellations series, in which first appeared the colours, themes and symbols that later came to define his work – reds and blues, women, birds and tears, the sun, moon and stars, all eventually pared down to the minimalist basics.
Perhaps the most innovative room of all is one full of work by other artists in homage to Miró, including fine pieces by Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Max Ernst, Richard Serra, Robert Motherwell and Eduardo Chillida. Other exhibits include Miró's enormous bright tapestries, pencil drawings (particularly of misshapen women and gawky ballerinas) and sculpture outside in the gardens. The Fundació also sponsors excellent temporary exhibitions, film shows, lectures and children's theatre, and puts on summer music nights (usually June and July).