Picasso and Miro

PICASSO. When his father José Ruiz Blasco was hired to teach at Barcelona's art school in 1895, 13-year-old Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a budding young artist whose drawings suggested a firm academic training. By the time of his definitive move to Paris in 1904 he had already painted his greatest Blue Period works, and was on his way to becoming the most acclaimed artist of the century. Barcelona's Picasso Museum is testimony to these vital formative years, spent in the city in the company of Catalonia's nascent avant-garde.
The museum arose out of a donation to the city by Picasso's private secretary and friend Jaume Sabartès, complemented by holdings from the artist's family. It graces a row of elegant medieval courtyard-palaces on C/Montcada, beginning with the mostly fifteenth-century Palau Berenguer d'Aguilar, with a courtyard almost certainly by Marc Safont, architect of the patios of the Generalitat. Since it first opened in 1963 it has expanded to incorporate two adjacent mansions, the later but also impressive Palaus Meca and Castellet, each with its own courtyard. In order to add another 3,500sq m the City of Barcelona has now begun further extensions in the next pair of buildings along the street (the baroque Casa Mauris and the early Gothic Casa Finestres, Nos. 21 and 23) and into a large courtyard behind them, which should be ready by late 1999. All to show as much of the collection of over 3,000 paintings, drawings and other work as possible, complemented by temporary shows on early twentieth-century masters and Picasso-related themes.
Two things stand out in the museum. The seamless presentation of Picasso's development from 1890 to 1904, from schoolboy doodlings - he was a constant, and very skilful, doodler - to art school copies to intense innovations in blue, is unbeatable. Then, in a flash, one jumps to a gallery of mature cubist paintings from 1917, and completes the hopscotch with a leap to oils from the late 1950s, based on Velázquez' famous Las Meninas in the Prado in Madrid. This veritable vistus interruptus could leave the visitor itchy for more. The culmination of Picasso's early genius in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the first cubist paintings (1907 and beyond) is completely absent.

So, there's nothing one can do but accept the collection's gaps as twists of history, and enjoy its many strengths. After some wonderful ceramics - donated by his widow Jacqueline - the chronological galleries begin in 1890, when young Pablo still lived in his native Málaga, sketching pigeons like his father (who painted them incessantly). Already at the age of nine his drawing was sure and inventive. After he had painted some perceptive portraits of old people and sailors in La Coruña (1895), Picasso and his family came to Barcelona, living on the nearby C/de la Mercè. Work from Picasso's student years includes portraits of his family, life drawings and landscapes, including some of Barceloneta beach. Pressured by his father to attract patrons, he did some large realist paintings, one of which, Science and Charity (1897), won a prize in Madrid. Only in the late 1890s did he begin to sign his bawdy nightlife scenes and caricatures with Picasso, his mother's last name. There are fascinating sketches of Barcelona 'decadents', letters-in-cartoons done on his first trip to Paris, and his menu cover from Els Quatre Gats, his first paid commission.
As he gained in artistic independence, his taste for marginal types intensified, with perversely beautiful paintings like Margot and La Nana (1901). The intense Blue Period is well represented by El Loco (1904) and Dead Woman (1903), as well as an azure oil of Barcelona rooftops recently donated by the Picasso heirs. The chronology is broken with the works from 1917 - the last extended period Picasso spent in Barcelona - including one titled Passeig de Colom, before you arrive at the many works inspired by Las Meninas and a series done in Cannes in 1957. Finally, the museum has an extensive collection of his impressive limited-edition lithographs and linocuts.

www.museupicasso.bcn.es

MIRO. b. 1893, Barcelona; d. 1983, Palma de Mallorca
Joan Miró Ferra was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona. At the age of 14, he went to business school in Barcelona and also attended La Lonja’s Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales y Bellas Artes in the same city. Upon completing three years of art studies, he took a position as a clerk. After suffering a nervous breakdown, he abandoned business and resumed his art studies, attending Francesc Galí’s Escola d’Art in Barcelona from 1912 to 1915. Miró received early encouragement from the dealer José Dalmau, who gave him his first solo show at his gallery in Barcelona in 1918. In 1917, he met Francis Picabia.
In 1920, Miró made his first trip to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso. From this time, Miró divided his time between Paris and Montroig, Spain. In Paris, he associated with the poets Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, and Tristan Tzara and participated in Dada activities. Dalmau organized Miró’s first solo show in Paris, at the Galerie la Licorne in 1921. His work was included in the Salon d’Automne of 1923. In 1924, Miró joined the Surrealist group. His solo show at the Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1925 was a major Surrealist event; Miró was included in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre that same year. He visited the Netherlands in 1928 and began a series of paintings inspired by Dutch masters. This year he also executed his first papiers collés and collages. In 1929, he started his experiments in lithography, and his first etchings date from 1933. During the early 1930s, he made Surrealist sculptures incorporating painted stones and found objects. In 1936, Miró left Spain because of the civil war; he returned in 1941. Also in 1936, Miró was included in the exhibitions Cubism and Abstract Art and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The following year, he was commissioned to create a monumental work for the Paris World’s Fair.
Miró’s first major museum retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. That year, Miró began working in ceramics with Josep Lloréns y Artigas and started to concentrate on prints; from 1954 to 1958, he worked almost exclusively in these two mediums. He received the Grand Prize for Graphic Work at the Venice Biennale in 1954, and his work was included in the first Documenta exhibition in Kassel the following year. In 1958, Miró was given a Guggenheim International Award for murals for the UNESCO building in Paris. The following year, he resumed painting, initiating a series of mural-sized canvases. During the 1960s, he began to work intensively in sculpture. Miró retrospectives took place at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1962, and the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1974. In 1978, the Musée National d’Art Moderne exhibited over 500 works in a major retrospective of his drawings. Miró died December 25, 1983, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

www.bcn.fjmiro.es