Joan Miró Foundation unveils major exhibition on painter's United States influence

The links between Joan Miró and America take center stage in the Joan Miró Foundation's newest exhibition, 'Miró and the United States.'

From October 10 to February 22, the museum will showcase 150 artworks by Miró and other influential artists who shaped or were shaped by this artistic dialogue.

Icons such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Louise Bourgeois, and even Salvador Dalí will appear in conversation with Miró’s works.

"It offers a completely new vision of Miró's art and his dialogue with North American artists," said Marko Daniel, director of the Joan Miró Foundation.

Miró's relationship with the United States began in the 1940s, when his exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) made a powerful impact.

"American painters saw Miró as a source of energy and an inexhaustible source of creativity," Daniel explained.

A highlight of this connection is Miró's "Constellations" series, first exhibited at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. The new show dedicates an entire room to this celebrated body of work. 

"It led to a frenzy of reaction," Daniel says. "The impact these works had was extraordinary."

Many American artists were profoundly inspired by Miró, with Pollock famously saying that Miró and Picasso were the artists who influenced him most.

While this influence is well known, the inspiration Miró drew from his American counterparts is far less familiar.

"Miró was enchanted by American freedom at the time," explained Dr. Matthew Gale, another curator of the exhibition.

In the context of Francoist Catalonia, amid censorship and repression, Miró looked to the United States in search of creative freedom, making America itself a source of inspiration for his work.

"Miró speaks, but he also listens, it's a dual exchange," said Daniel. "It shows the capacity of artists to generate hope in complex contexts."

However, their exchange was purely artistic. "Miró never learned English, and his counterparts didn’t speak Spanish or Catalan," Gale added.

Organized in collaboration with The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the exhibition includes not only paintings but also drawings, sculptures, prints, films, and archival material. 

"It's an incomparable opportunity to discover works by artists who truly shaped the 20th century," Daniel said. 

The curation process has taken over four years to complete.  "We've gathered works from 50 different lenders," Daniel explains.

"It’s an extraordinary amount of work that becomes almost invisible once you enter the exhibition. What visitors see are the beautiful relationships between artworks, but behind that lies an immense amount of research, persistence, and a bit of good luck," he concludes.

To learn more about the life and work of Joan Miró, listen to the 2022 episode of our podcast Filling the Sink dedicated to the artist.