JOAN MIRÓ

From the Collection of The Kreeger Museum

Exhibition Website

Jan 21 2017 - Feb 25 2017

Kreeger Museum

Washington, DC

The Kreeger Museum presents an intimate special exhibition, JOAN MIRÓ From The Collection of The Kreeger Museum.  The Kreeger’s complete collection of works by Joan Miró will be on view, including The Mallorca Suite, Makimono, and El Vol de l’Alosa (The Flight of the Lark).

Joan Miró was the consummate professional artist, a perfectionist, who insisted he was a “self-taught amateur” in order to secure for himself permission to transgress traditional techniques – to experiment and improvise – especially in pursuit of printmaking as a medium for his breathtaking expressions of devotion for Catalan culture. His beloved Mallorca, the sunlit island where he lived and worked after 1940, was the subject of such inventiveness.

Purchased in 1973 by David and Carmen Kreeger when they attended Miró’s 80th birthday celebration in Palma de Mallorca, The Mallorca Suite is an unconventional masterpiece [....] and The Kreeger Museum is believed to be the only place in the United States where a complete set of the suite may be seen. Added to the set are color states of each etching, black states and technical (or reverse) prints. Inclusion of these decompositions offers viewers the exceptional opportunity to see the work evolve, as the artist himself did in 1973. Miró saw on the pages the familiar faces of people who lived and worked, as did he, on this Mediterranean island. We are not meant to recognize them; we are only to experience delight in scrutinizing the emergence of visages we shall never know but will never forget. The etched title page and a full color gouache painting puts the exclamation point on the entire display that is The Mallorca Suite of 36 images by Joan Miró.

“I make no distinction between painting and poetry. It therefore happens that I illustrate my canvases with poetic phrases and vice versa.” Inevitably his creative wanderlust led Miró to produce books, especially to illustrate the work of the many poets who had become his friends. In 1973, as a contribution to the festivities that were being prepared for his birthday commemoration, he completed a notable edition of El Vol de l’Alosa to celebrate the works of nineteen Mallorcan poets. 

Even the type characters were specially made in Bodoni 12 and melted down after this one use. Miró decided that the poets deserved an even greater tribute, so he cut a new lithograph as a memento – original black printing with colors added by his own hand. It is this complete assemblage that the Kreegers purchased, in addition to The Mallorca Suite, when they visited Palma de Mallorca.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, Miro in His Studio (Art Memoir) offers insight into the world of Miro who fulfilled his ambition when he settled in Majorca in 1950 where he worked in his studio until his death in 1985. The photographs and plates in the book convey the poetic world of this studio.

Miro in His Studio (Art Memoir)


  • European
  • 20th Century
  • Joan Miró

Exhibition Venues & Dates