If you want to see the Catalan genius of Miró, you’ll have to go up Montjuic mountain.

If Joan Miró was once described as “night, music and silence”, a visit to the Foundation suggests day, light and joy. In art, extremes complement one another. If the sun is out, more than just a museum, you’ll enjoy a huge terrace of art overlooking Barcelona. 

Joan Miró was born in Barcelona on 20th April 1893 and died in Palma de Mallorca on Christmas Day 1983. He was a painter, sculptor, printmaker and ceramicist throughout the different periods of his artistic production. He began to paint very early on and when he was just 25 he had his first exhibition in Barcelona. He then moved to Paris. 

Until 1924 his painting was marked by cubist influences (that same year he met Picasso in Paris) and depicted landscapes, portraits and nudes. Later on he began to subscribe to the dreamlike, phantasmagorical language of surrealism, influenced greatly by Paul Klee. 

His first international recognition came in 1928 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired two of his works. Following a period in which he questioned the sense of painting, he began to make sculptures. Among his most significant works are those which he made during the Spanish Civil War which show the dichotomy between the horror of the situation and his own dreamy nature. The latter won through in the end and Miró continued with his classical, somewhat ingenuous vision of the world (using birds, stars, female figures, and so on). The large mural works which can be seen, for example, at Barcelona airport and the University of Harvard were made at the end of his career. 

The Fundació Joan Miró was designed by Joan Prats and the architect Josep Lluis Sert and was opened on 10 June 1975 by the artist himself. In its brightly lit rooms, the building houses 11,000 works, among which there are 240 paintings, 175 sculptures, approximately 8,000 drawings and almost all his graphic works, as well as tapestries and ceramics. Because Miró did a little of everything.  

Throughout his life he showed great interest in the diversity of materials, forms and colours, which led him to research and experiment with different artistic media: painting, sculpture, graphic works, ceramics, theatre and textiles. He created one of the richest and most fascinating pictoric languages of the 20th century. 

Miró was like a child, as tireless as he was curious. That is why you can see all of his experiences at the Foundation, from immense paintings to sculptures, from tapestries to installations, and ceramics to texts. 

Don’t miss any of the numerous rooms: The “Tapestry” room, the “Sculpture” room, the “60s and 70s” room, the “K” room, and the rooms named alter his wife “Pilar Juncosa”…they are all full of surprises. 

But above all, don’t miss the views of the outside. Offset against the blue of the sky, the great building designed by his good friend Josep Lluís Sert, is notable for its clear, simple, spacious geometric shapes which dominate the great city below. 

You can also see a sculpture outside the building called “Bon Dia, Barcelona” or Good Morning Barcelona, and another named “A bird’s caress” in painted bronze. And none of this is surprising because for Miró birds, stars and female figures are as close to heaven as his Foundation. 

But Barcelona offers a great deal more by the artist. Look, for example, at the ground half way down the Rambles, near the Liceu Opera House where you can see one of his mosaics named the Pla de l’Os. And also in the open air, in the Escorxador park is one of his best-known sculptures entitled “Woman and Bird”. 

Walk around Barcelona and find Miró!