"Joan Miró seeks universality from the depths of his land."

BarcelonaRosa Maria Malet (Badalona, ​​1948) and Marko Daniel (Aachen, 1964) are the two directors who have led the Fundació Joan Miró for the longest period of time. Malet directed it for 37 years, and Daniel arrived in 2018. The ARA has brought them together to mark the institution's 50th anniversary. They recall how they met, when Daniel, who was working at the Tate Modern in London, began collaborating with the foundation on the occasion of the exhibition Juan Miró. The Staircase of Escape. "At that time, I spoke Spanish; I didn't yet speak Catalan, and it was my turn to come here for research, and we shared the project," Marko Daniel recalls. "The foundation is the center in the world where not only the most important accumulation of works and archival material is preserved, but also where knowledge about Miró's work is held. The foundation is already recognized as the necessary partner when you want to do something important about Miró," Daniel explains.

The foundation is an international benchmark. How did it start, just as Franco's regime was ending?

— Rosa Maria Malet: When the foundation opened, the Barcelona public had high expectations, and the first director, Francesc Vicens, lived up to these expectations with such exceptional exhibitions as Olfactory suggestionsLater, during my four years as acting director, I was, in a way, a continuation, because initially my stay was limited to the four years of leave Vicens had requested to dedicate herself to politics. And when the board of trustees, which included Miró's family, confirmed me as director, they insisted that I never lose sight of the fact that Miró wanted the foundation to be a place open to all artists. There was Espai 10, which later became Espai 13, but that openness to artists was always maintained, whether they were Miró's contemporaries, like Calder, Duchamp, and Arp, or from a later generation, like Tàpies, Rothko, and Warhol. And when we celebrated the centenary of Miró's birth, it seemed to me that there was one aspect that hadn't been widely publicized: the collection of preparatory drawings, annotations, and workbooks. That was a good time to make a sufficiently exhaustive presentation, relating the finished paintings to the previous works.

The foundation operated for a time as Barcelona's museum of contemporary art, but has since ceased to serve that function.

— RMM: We maintained the dual focus on Miró and the other artists because it was what both the board of trustees and our visitors expected, but I think that now that the MACBA, the MNAC, and the Museu Tàpies exist, the foundation is more focused on Miró. I think very interesting proposals are being put forward, such as Miró-Picasso and Miró Matisse, beyond the images, which deepen the knowledge of Miró.

So there are still aspects of Miró's legacy that need to be explored further?

— Marko Daniel: Although there is new research on Miró, this is very important. Miró-Picasso and Miró-Matisse were based on research and on October 10th we inaugurated Miró and the United States,which is based on more than four years of research. It's a project with a lot of research in which female artists will play a very important role. And in this way, we find new ways to research Joan Miró. But it also happens with projects with younger artists at Espai 13 or the Joan Miró Prize, where artists who, in theory, have no connection with Miró tell us that Miró is very important to them. Miró speaks to today's artists and challenges today's audiences.

And why do you think Miró attracts young artists?

— MD: There's a very specific trait about Miró: curiosity. We talk a lot about his generosity, his openness, that he was a humble person, but he also had enormous curiosity, and at no point in his life did he stop discovering new things, because he always wanted to know what young artists, new generations of creators, and also children and young people were doing. And he also wanted to stay abreast of new ideas in the fields of science, music, literature...

— RMM: Perhaps it's outdated now, but in the past, people had a very immediate perception of Miró, based on identifying the characteristic elements in his paintings, such as stars. What I find interesting is seeing how Miró is a figure deeply rooted in his homeland; and we have to add everything he experienced when he settled in Paris at the age of 20, near where André Masson lived, and through him he met all the surrealist writers. Thus, the fusion of one and the other creates an unusual and unique personality.

Is this more immediate, or epidermal, perception of Miró outdated?

— RMM: I think so, and the exhibitions for its centenary and others after its founding and in other places were very important for that.

— MD: The foundation bears witness to Miró's methodical nature, as he kept drafts, notebooks, diary fragments in which he had made a small sketch; he worked on ideas for a long time. And this truly means that he had a 100% artist's mentality. But he also had an attitude that has a lot to do with generating knowledge. He is a very complete artist, because we have the emotional side but also a very committed aspect to the way he worked. This commitment is closely related to the fact that he lived during a complex and difficult 20th century. For Miró, being so rooted in the Camp de Tarragona was very important, because this focus concentrates his vision and then expands, allowing him to arrive at an artistic language that has the capacity to appeal to a universal audience. He doesn't seek universality through simple abstraction or the surface, but from the depths of the material and his land. When we bring Miró to Tokyo and people look at these paintings from his early period, they reveal a lot about who we are. And when I say who we are, I mean who we are here, in Barcelona, ​​​​in Catalonia, but also who we are as human beings.

What would Miró think of a present as turbulent as the current one?

— RMM: I think it would hurt him, the situation we're experiencing internationally, and locally, with the lack of attention paid to language, culture, and the roots of our tradition.

— MD: With the research we conducted for the exhibition, we're talking about a post-war situation in which there was a dictatorship at home, where everything was gray, and, meanwhile, in the United States, everything was in Technicolor. It was a completely hopeful experience for the future of humanity, a democratic hope, in which we found all these elements, which are not only artistic, in Miró's life. If we look at history carefully, we can draw some very good lessons for the present moment and for our future.

What has being on Montjuïc meant for the foundation, and how do you think the planned transformations will affect it?

— RMM: Until now, it's been harder because access wasn't easy. We have the funicular, which seems to be a great help, but we often found it stopped for nine months due to renovation work. This was often the case.

— MD: It seems to me that circumstances have changed; access isn't so bad now. If we compare our life in Barcelona with that of a resident of Tokyo or Paris, we have it very easy here, even on Montjuïc. We're in an urban park with magnificent views. In March of next year, we'll inaugurate a garden that we have right next door but wasn't accessible before. All of this integrates us into this context of nature, architecture, and art. Furthermore, after the pandemic, and with the concerns we have today, these are key elements for many citizens. I think our location, although not as central, is what I would like it to be. Once again, it confirms that Miró and Sert's decision to build a new building in a park shows they were looking to the future.

Do you have any favorite works by Miró?

— RMM: There is one that has left its mark on me, both because of the unconsciousness of the moment and because of the joy of having it in the foundation. One day I went to Palma to see Pilar Juncosa. She told me to go to her bedroom and bring her the Constellation that I kept. "Now I'll ask you to help us wrap it so you can take it with you, because I've decided that Constellation "It has to go to the foundation," he told me. I was speechless, obviously, because we had never discussed what his intentions were with this work. It's a small work, it doesn't cost much to transport. And, of course, I simply took it in a cardboard package and without any insurance, and the next day it was already at the foundation.

And you, Marco?

— MD: Mine is a painting that has sometimes been considered a bit difficult: Blue dot landscape. It's a large-format canvas, completely white, with a small blue dot. For me, it represents Miró's process of working, of thinking, of arriving at a painting like this not as a frivolous or spontaneous gesture, but as the fruit of decades of work. In a way, however small and simple it may be, this painting reminds us of his teacher Modesto de Urgell, his landscapes with the horizon line and a full moon or a sun, but also of the emptiness of Japanese painting, the Zen Buddhist concept of nothingness, and his openness to very, very long horizons. It also speaks to the experience of vision, the sense of being in the landscape here in the summer, with the heat, closing your eyes and having the point where the sun is burning in your retina.