Exhibition
Miro - Picasso
Exhibition
Miro - Picasso
2 MUSEUMS 2 ARTISTS
DOUBLE EXHIBITION MIRO - PICASSO
Miro – Picasso
Exhibition at the Picasso Museum and the Fondacio Miro
October 20, 2023, to February 25, 2024
The year 2023 is dedicated to Pablo Picasso. “Picasso Celebration 1973-2023” is the theme of exhibitions taking place worldwide. It marks the 50th anniversary of his death and pays tribute to the great artist.
In addition to exhibitions in Vienna, Paris, and even Rome, his hometown of youth, Barcelona, is also taking an active part.
However, the exhibition in Barcelona will be a double exhibition: 2 museums, 2 artists!
Picasso will be presented alongside his Catalan friend and artist Joan Miró. 2023 also marks exactly 40 years since Miró’s passing.
The close friendship lasting 50 years that the two artists maintained led them to establish museums in Barcelona. The museums – Fundacio Miro + Museo Picasso – founded on the initiative of the artists have certainly enriched Barcelona. With this exhibition, the focus will now be on this friendship and the selected location of Barcelona.
The exhibition will revolve around six chronological thematic areas. Over 250 works from international museums and private collections will be on display. The two artists – Miro and Picasso – had such a profound impact on 20th-century art, and this will be clearly evident in the exhibition.
Exhibition
tickets
Articket
EUR 38Currently, the only ticket option I can offer. 6 museums at half the price. No timeslot reservation required + Skip the line (activate the ticket at another museum before using it!)
Buy Articket
The details
at a glance
Exhibition:
Miro – Picasso
Duration of the exhibition: October 20, 2023, to February 25, 2024
Opening hours:
Picasso Museum opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday from 9 am to 8 pm
Fundacio Miro opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10:00 am – 8:00 pm
Sundays, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Prices:
Picasso Museum collection + Miro-Picasso exhibition only at the Picasso Museum + Audioguide:
EUR 19 for adults aged 26 and above
EUR 7 for young people between 15 and 30 years + seniors aged 65 and above
EUR 5 for children under 18 years, people with disabilities
Miro Foundation collection + exhibition only at the Miro Foundation:
EUR 14 for adults aged 26 and above
EUR 15 for seniors aged 65 and above + young people between 18 and 25 years
Free admission for children under 15 years, people with disabilities
Combined ticket for both museums, but ONLY the exhibition (official website):
EUR 22 for adults aged 26 and above
EUR 12.50 for seniors aged 65 and above + young people between 18 and 25 years
Free for children under 18 years
Addresses:
Picasso Museum Address:
C/ de Montcada, 15-23, 08003 Barcelona
Miro Foundation Address:
Parc de Montjuïc, s/n, 08038 Barcelona
Articket:
The Articket is currently the only ticket I can offer you. Regular tickets can only be purchased through the respective official websites. The Articket provides access to 6 museums at a reduced price (Eur 38), including the Picasso Museum and the Miro Foundation. With the Articket, you don’t need to reserve a timeslot and can use the special Articket entrance!
Tip: Activate the Articket at one of the other 4 museums, and you’ll get into the exhibition even faster!
ICOM Card:
Free entry to both parts of the exhibition. No advance reservation required.
The Artists
Picasso & Miro
Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) was born in Malaga. However, at a young age, in 1895, he moved to Barcelona with his family. His father taught art at the “La Llotja” art school, and Picasso, who had already learned a lot from his father and displayed incredible talent at the age of 14, was admitted as a student to this school. (You can still visit La Lotja as part of a guided tour today.)
After a brief stay in Madrid and his first exhibition at the Barcelona artist café Els Quatre Gats in 1900, where he cultivated a circle of friends around Ramon Casas and Santiago Rusiñol, Picasso was drawn to Paris repeatedly. There, he encountered the works of Cézanne and Toulouse-Lautrec and formed many important friendships.
Joan Miró (1893 – 1983), however, Picasso met in Barcelona in 1917. They worked together on various projects.
Perhaps their most significant joint project was their artistic contributions to the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. This is where Picasso created “Guernica,” as Spain wanted to send an urgent message to the world while being in the midst of the Spanish Civil War.
Miró contributed the work “The Catalan Peasant in Revolt” (5.50 x 3.60 meters), which was painted directly on the wall of the staircase. When the pavilion was demolished, the painting was removed beforehand, but unfortunately, it is still considered lost to this day. One of the architects of the pavilion is, by the way, the architect of the Fundació Miró in Barcelona: Josep Lluís Sert (1902–1983).
Extra Info: Alexander Calder, another close friend of Picasso, also installed his “Mercury Fountain” in the middle of the ground floor of the Spanish Pavilion.
About the exhibition
Miro - Picasso
The time has come, the exhibition is officially open! Last night, Jacqueline and I attended the opening and mingled with the art-loving Catalans so we could write this report for you today!
First and foremost: this exhibition is worth a visit!
You can choose to visit only one of the museums, Picasso first or Miro – it doesn’t matter: the exhibition still works. The concept is very cleverly done. It’s a chronological exhibition, but the chronology is approached in both museums. Works from the Picasso Museum are on display in the Miro Museum, and vice versa. Their own collections are complemented by works from international museums and private collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Museum Picasso Paris, Museo Reina Sofia and the Tate.
Some well-known works are on display alongside, at least for us, unknown gems!
And it’s actually the first time that these two artists are presented side by side and in relation to each other in Barcelona. So, a visit is an absolute must!
THE STAGES OF THE EXHIBITION
The Meeting
a) Barcelona 1917: Gran Teatre del Liceu (Miro Museum)
In 1917, Picasso designed costumes and set pieces for the ballet “Parade” at the Liceu. The Cubist style of Picasso (36 years old) was an eye-opening experience for the young Miró (20 years old). It influenced Miró to explore Cubism as well!
b) Second Encounter in Paris 1920 (Picasso Museum)
Miró met Picasso again in Paris in 1920 for the second time. He had a package from Picasso’s mother to deliver to him. This second meeting went so well – they immediately liked each other – that Picasso recommended Miró to his art collector friend Paul Rosenberg, along with the advice, “Believe me, if you want to be a painter, stay in Paris.” By that time, Miró was already a painter, and Picasso eventually bought one of his works. You can find this self-portrait by Miró in this exhibition as well.
Painting: Joan Miró, “A Gentleman,” 1924, oil on canvas, Kunstmuseum Basel, currently on display at the Picasso Museum Barcelona.
Paris and Surrealism
The work on the ballet “The Mercure” (1924), for which Picasso designed the costumes and set, revealed a “new” Picasso, one who was moving away from Cubism and joining the Surrealists. Miro witnessed the performance of the ballet a day before returning to Barcelona, and he was thrilled! He, too, took significant steps in that direction.
In the Fundacio Miro, you can admire the significant Picasso work “The Three Dancers” from the Tate Gallery, a work that is not typically loaned out but was brought to this exhibition by the current (German-speaking) director of the Miro Foundation, Marko Daniel, who stated that he achieved it “with the help of several phone calls.”
Picasso began “The Three Dancers” as a realistic depiction of a ballet rehearsal. However, while he was working on the piece, his friend Ramon Pichot passed away. Pichot was the partner of Germaine Gargello, who was shot by Carles Casagemas before he took his own life in 1901. The memory of this tragic love triangle prompted Picasso to change his approach by making the angular figures even more distorted, intensifying the colors, and, in general, transforming the entire painting into an explosion of violence. Love, sex, and death merge here in an ecstatic danse macabre that went on to become an emblem of Surrealism.
Painting: Pablo Picasso, “The Three Dancers,” 1925, oil on canvas, Tate Gallery, currently exhibited at the Miro Museum.
War Years
a) Spanish Civil War (Miro Museum)
As mentioned earlier, the Spanish Civil War was the focal point of the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Picasso’s “Guernica” was created, and you can discover some test paintings for it in the current Miro-Picasso exhibition. Miro also engaged with this conflict, even though he moved to France in 1937. The work “Man and Woman in front of a pile of excrements” (1935) is meant to illustrate the tragedy of war.
The orientation and gesturing of the deformed bodies seem to allude to an impossible embrace. The expressiveness of the colors contrasts with the blackness of the apocalyptic sky. The elasticity of the figures’ limbs, the desert-like landscape, and the excrement that presides over the scene are a manifestation of Miro’s profoundly pessimistic sentiment.
Painting: Joan Miro, “Man and Woman in front of a pile of excrements,” 1935, oil on copper, 23×32 cm, Fundacio Miro, Barcelona
b) World War II (Picasso Museum)
Due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Miro had been living in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy, since 1937. When World War II started in 1939, he decided to return to Catalonia. Picasso moved from Paris to Royan during this time. In this period, Miro created the Constellations series (23 works), which dealt with signs and symbols. It seams that Miro looked away from the horrors of war, while Picasso examined them closely, reflected in his works, which featured claustrophobic spaces, human limbs, and food items – simply because they were lacking.
Ceramics
Both artists had a penchant for ceramics. Personally, I’m not a big fan of them, but they are, of course, an important part of the exhibition. In the Picasso Museum, you can see some works by both artists… Time to form your own opinion 😉
Ceramics: Pablo Picasso: Vase 2 with “Fauns and Nymphs,” 1948, “The Owl,” 1951-53, Plate “Owl,” 1957; Joan Miro, Vase 1 “Vase,” 1941-46, and Vase 3 in the middle, “Vase,” 1946, currently exhibited in the Picasso Museum.
The Final Rebellion: Picasso’s Style and Miro’s Language
In their later years, both artists experienced the height of their popularity. There were many exhibitions, including Picasso’s important exhibition at the Palais des Papes in Avignon (1970 + 1973) with 400 exhibited works. Picasso was almost 90 years old at the time.
Miro was 81 years old when he organized the exhibition at the Grand Palais in 1974. Both artists continued to work into old age. Picasso pushed his painting to its limits, while Miro, in his later years, withdrew and sought to elevate his art to a different level—a universal expression.
Our
Conclusion
Both Jacqueline and I find the exhibition very successful, and we are delighted that Barcelona is once again hosting an internationally oriented exhibition.
This exhibition features two internationally renowned artists, and works from other important collections in Europe and US have travelled to Barcelona for this occasion. We believe that this exhibition, spread across two museums, is well worth a winter trip to Barcelona!
The juxtaposition of the two artists is well executed in many places, although in a few (very few) instances, we wished that even more could have been teased out. But hey, we certainly have no complaints 😉
For the future, we hope that the two museums consider a permanent comparison of the artists. It couldn’t hurt to have a Picasso in the Miro Museum and a Miro in the Picasso Museum… Just saying! 😀
Text and image rights: © Céline Mülich, 2023
With permission from the Picasso Museum
Permission from Miro is pending, but the director was pleased with the blog article…
Exception images:
World’s Fair poster: Wikipedia.
Barcelona
What to do in winter
Christmas time in Barcelona
find out more
The Hop-on Christmas Bus
find out more
The Lights of Sant Pau
find out more
