Miro, Miro, On the Wall

There is a superb museum in Barcelona to display much of the work of Joan Miro thanks to his foundation, his wife, and his collectors.  From his early beginnings until his death, this museum is the showplace of one man's study of art that is his life's work. 

He began painting by studying with masters in Barcelona, then headed off to Paris at 27 to learn and experiment and develop and mature.  At one point he said he wanted to annihilate painting so he worked in many other forms of media.  Even though he worked on canvas and paper, they became his models for what he eventually produced.  Some of it may look improvised, but he has books full of notes of his ideas and discoveries about his evolving work, and nothing was improvised.  It was a well thought out endeavor to create something new, something different.

Miro was a man that spent time with and learned from other creative people.  One large room in the museum is devoted to homages by his friends and followers to him; true testimony to how much he was esteemed by others.

We all were impressed with an artist we really did not know much about before today other than a few pieces of his paintings or a sculpture that some lucky museum has on display that we had previously admired.  When we fly out of Barcelona on Thursday, we will look for his huge tile mosaic that is the centerpiece of the airport.