The portrait of his mother that Joan Miró sacrificed to free himself from tradition

BarcelonaAs an artist, Joan Miró rebelled against his parents and quickly challenged artistic tradition and conventions. One of his most famous slogans is "to kill painting." This statement fits perfectly with the discovery made by the Fundació Joan Miró's preventive conservation and collection teams, led by Elisabet Serra, and made public this Thursday. To make the painting Paint (1925-1927), Miró took a portrait of his mother, Dolors Ferrà i Oromí, that another artist had made, laid it aside, and painted over it. Using non-invasive techniques, including X-rays, infrared photography, and hyperspectral imaging, researchers have been able to reveal the underlying portrait and identify its model. His use of his mother's portrait may have been a mockery, revenge for her and his father's opposition to his desire to pursue an artistic career. This decision was not due to a lack of materials, but rather a deliberate one.

Furthermore, Paint It goes back to a time, Paris in the 1920s, when Miró's creativity was in full swing, when he went from the magical realism of The farmhouse to more daring works, within the surrealist orbit, such as Paint. Until now, the academic paintings that Miró later intervened in were well-known: in the 40s and 50s they were portraits, and in the 60s and 70s, landscapes. In both cases, Miró always left fragments of the painting visible to emphasize his criticism of vulgar art. The case of Paint It's different because Miró completely covered the previous painting. And, curiously, he didn't scrape off the fragments of the mother's earrings and brooch that later created raised marks in his painting.

Joan Miró gave away Paint to his friend Joan Prats, who kept it until his death in 1970. Five years later, it entered the Fundació Joan Miró as a donation from the Prats family. At that time, the painting was not in a good state of conservation: in a restoration report dated 1978, technicians detailed the presence of small losses and cracks in the painted surface. It was then that the first X-ray of the painting was taken: it was possible to observe that there was an underlying portrait, but it was not possible to identify who it represented. Now the technicians have been able to do so because they found in Son Boter a portrait of the mother, the work of the painter Cristóbal Montserrat Jorba (Vilanova i la Geltrú, 1869 - Barcelona, ​​​​1935), which fits stylistically and technically.

Another aspect of the study, in which entities such as the Center for the Restoration of Movable Property of Catalonia (CRBMC) and the Pablo de Olavide University of Seville (UPO) collaborated, is that it has allowed us to delve deeper into Miró's creative process. Paint It is composed of at least seven layers: the bottom five are made up of a preparatory layer of lead white and four paint layers containing mainly ground pigments, cadmium yellow, carbon black, cobalt blue, and zinc white. On top of these, Miró applied a preparation of zinc white and baryta, and the outermost color layer, based on cobalt blue with a little cadmium yellow. The binder Miró used is oil. It has also been noted that the brushstrokes of the preparatory layers are vertical, while those of the blue paint are horizontal.

The documentary 'The Secret of Miró'

To make this discovery known, the Foundation has organized a small-format exhibition, Under Miró's Layers: A Scientific Investigation, which can be visited until June 29 in room 14 of the permanent collection tour. In addition to Paint and the underlying image, the sample includes Portrait of Dolors Ferrà and Oromí, by Cristòfol Montserrat (1907), and preparatory drawings by Paint and Miró's original lists of materials he had in his studio, including the pigments found in his painting. Images obtained with infrared and X-ray photography will also be on display, and a demonstration on screen of how a hyperspectral camera works: as you move through different wavelengths, what is invisible to the human eye becomes visible. Furthermore, the La Caixa Foundation has collaborated on this project by producing a documentary about this research, entitled Miró's secret, which can be seen on CaixaForum+ starting this Thursday.