The Joan Miró Foundation opened to the public on 10 June 1975. It had its origins in Miró’s first large exhibition in Barcelona, in 1968, at the Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu. Several figures from the world of the arts saw the opportunity to have a space in Barcelona dedicated to the artist’s work. However, in accordance with his wishes, the new institution was also to promote and publicise the work of contemporary artists in all its aspects. At a time when artistic and cultural life was certainly minimal, the Foundation brought a refreshing vitality, together with a new, more dynamic concept of an art museum in which Miró’s art was shown alongside a wide variety of creative works by other artists – a fact that is reflected in the Foundation’s full name of Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art.
Photography has always been included in Contemporary Art for the artist Joan Miró (20 April 1893, Barcelona-25 december 1983, Palma, Majorca, Balearic Islands).
Even if the photography department created in 1985 by David Balsells, Pere Formiguera and Marta Gili in the Joan Miró Foundation is no longer active, the foundation has been spreading photography in its exhibition programs since the beginning : 28 photography exhibitions were held at the Joan Miró Foundation from 1979 until 2012. Retrospectives of international and national names of photography (Lee Miller, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nicolás de Lekuona, Catalá-Roca, Joaquim Gomis) or thematical collective exhibitions about photography (Italian Futurist Photography, Collection of photographs by Sam Wagstaff, Japanese photography. Today and its origins, Idas & Caos: aspects of the photographic avant-garde, The ghost city. 16 visions of human absence in the human environment etc, etc). Joan Fontcuberta, Marta Gili, Juan Naranjo, Alain Sayag et bien d’autres ont apporté leurs talents de commissaires à tous ces programmes.
The Joan Miró Foundation’s collection of photography is limited in its variety but also very larges thanks to Joaquim Gomis archives donation to the foundation : 70’000 photographs and additionnal documents. Joaquim Gomis (Barcelona 1902 – 1991) was the first president of the Joan Miró Foundation. Not only because he had a long and strong friendship with Joan Miró but also because he was on of the first photographer of his generation to show a new lenguage of photography, as much thematical as formal.
The rest of the Joan Miró Foundation’s collection is composed by portraits of the artist by photographers that gave a print of their photographs to the Foundation :
Ralph Hermanns, original negative and print. Donation by Ralph Hermanns
Arnold Newman, print. Donation by Arnold Newman
Man Ray, print. Donation by Juliet Man Ray
Francesc Català-Roca. print. Donation by Francesc Català-Roca
Irving Penn. print. Donation by Irving Penn
Today’s portfolio is showing Joan Miró by Ralph Hermanns and photographs of his « masia » in Majorca as well as photographs of the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona.
Tomorrow Tuesday June 11, 2013 you will see a portfolio of Joaquim Gomis, through an exhibition held last year in the foundation : « Joaquim Gomis: from the oblique gaze to the visual narration », curated by Juan Naranjo.
Lola Fabry
Fundació Joan Miró
Parc de Montjuïc s/n
08038 Barcelona
Spain
tel +34 934 439 470
