Puig buys a Miró painting that was deposited at the artist's foundation
'The night', the work acquired by the perfumer lineage, was owned by one of the painter's grandsons
BarcelonaThe Puig family's art collection is growing. As the ARA has learned, the Puig family bought Joan Miró's painting La nuit (1974) in 2024, and the work has been on display at their corporate headquarters in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat ever since. The painting was owned by one of the artist's grandsons, Joan Punyet Miró; and the sale has the particularity that La nuit was part of the deposit of works that Miró's heirs made to the Fundació Joan Miró in 2021, and that the president of the board, Sara Puig, is a member of this perfumer dynasty. Punyet Miró had withdrawn the deposit of La nuit in the same year, 2024.
La nuit was one of the outstanding works in the deposit, which included 59 pieces, five of which are by Calder, and was one of the major cultural news stories in Barcelona at the time. Before Barcelona, the works had been seen in Madrid in a monographic exhibition organized by the Fundació Mapfre. At the foundation's headquarters in Barcelona,
La nuit could be seen alongside Le jour, with which it forms a pair. Le jour is among the paintings that Joan Miró donated to his foundation.
Deposits of works of art by private individuals in museums are advantageous operations for both parties: the museum's collection is expanded without having to make acquisitions, which are often unaffordable; and the collector can save for a time the expenses of storage, conservation, and security measures.
The Joan Miró Foundation is a private institution, one-fifth of whose budget is provided by the Barcelona City Council, the Generalitat, and the Spanish Ministry of Culture. All three administrations were informed of the sale.
In 2023, Sara Puig Alsina was unanimously re-elected as president of the Joan Miró Foundation for another four years. She has been a member of the Board of Trustees since November 2013, of the Delegate Commission since November 2014, and president of the institution since 2019. Likewise, Puig has been supporting the Miró Foundation for decades.
Puig's headquarters consist of two skyscrapers located near Plaça Europa in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. Before La nuit, one could already see Dona, a large-format sculpture based on a Puig perfume bottle, and Monument à la femme, created from a Puig soap bar with which Miró cleaned his brushes. The latter was temporarily loaned by the Miró Foundation in 2017.