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Joan Miró, a beacon of modernity in the Republic

2021-03-12T02:55:48.308Z


An exhibition analyzes the painter's relationship with the ADLAN group, which between 1932 and 1936 exhibited artists such as Alexander Calder, Remedios Varo, Man Ray, Hans Harp, Salvador Dalí and Picasso in Barcelona.


Two people look at the work "Untitled" a large drawing made by Joan Miró in 1933, next to a 'collage' from 1934 and, in the background, the map with the five exhibitions that the painter held with ADLAN in Barcelona, ​​in the exhibition that can be seen at the Miró Foundation until July.Enric Fontcuberta / EFE

The biography of Joan Miró assures that for 50 years he did not exhibit in Barcelona.

That since his first solo show in 1918, held at the Dalmau gallery, and the great retrospective of 1968 at the Old Hospital de la Santa Cruz Miró, his work could not be seen in this city.

And it could be, because the criticism Miró received in his first show was so fierce that he must not have wanted to repeat it.

But it was not like that.

Between 1931 and 1935 Miró, at a crucial moment in his career, when official art continued to turn its back on him, exhibited his latest creations in Republican Barcelona on five occasions, before anywhere else.

It was in exhibitions held in his own home, that of the architect and great friend Josep Lluís Sert and in the Syra and Catalonía galleries that a group of people were able to see the artist's new paintings and sculptures for the first time, days before they traveled. to New York, Paris or Zurich to be exhibited and sold.

This group, made up of a hundred people - architects, artists, photographers, poets, art critics, gallery owners, musicians, but also merchants and illustrated bourgeoisie - was the self-called Friends of New Art (ADLAN) who saw in Joan Miró a a beacon to follow in its desire for openness and modernity in the face of so-called "ancient art".

For his part, Miró found in ADLAN a testing ground for his most experimental research and a preview before the presentations to the general public.

This relationship and its implications are the focus of the

Miró-ADLAN

exhibition

.

An archive of modernity

that can be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona until July 4.

Curated by Muriel Gómez, Jordana Mendelson and Joan M. Minguet, the exhibition, which has the collaboration of the Banco Sabadell Foundation, emphasizes all the documentation generated by the group throughout its brief but intense life.

A documentation that the group's secretary, Adelita Lobo, conscientiously compiled, and which was deposited in the Historical Archive of the College of Architects of Catalonia: albums, photographs, administrative documentation, and

ephemera,

the brochures of the time that Lobo and that have become vital to the study of this group.

The curators, who have also delved into the archives of the Joan Miró Foundation, which houses the abundant documentation that the painter preserved throughout his life, have put together a selection of works from the five exhibitions that Miró presented in Barcelona.

In less than four years, between November 1932 and June 1936, ADLAN, with visible heads, in addition to Miró and Sert, such as that of the gallery owner Joan Prats, the critic Sebastià Gash, the writer JV Foix and the journalist Carles Sindreu, made more than fifty activities: exhibitions such as those dedicated to Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Edgar Varèse, Remedios Varo, Paul Éluard, Ángel Ferrant, Salvador Dalí and Hans Arp;

poetry recitals like those of García Lorca.

Also musical auditions, cinematographic projections (the iconoclastic

The Golden Age,

by Dalí and Buñuel

, could be seen in June 1934

);

conferences, circus days and a long etcetera.

Also a monographic exhibition in 1936 of Picasso's work in Spain, which was seen in Barcelona, ​​Bilbao and Madrid and a real gem: the special Christmas issue of 1934 of the magazine

D'ací.

D'allà

on 20th century art, a true compilation of the avant-gardes of the moment for which Miró made the cover.

All these acts, despite being private, as the commissioners emphasize, were widely publicized in the press.

Miró participated actively in the social life of ADLAN.

Her name appears in the lists of attendees that Adelita Lobo conscientiously made for the album she created.

In the only photo of the audience at an ADLAN act that remains, a session of dances compared between a flamenco painting and the performance of Joan Marginyà, which took place on March 24, 1933, the painter is seen in the third row seated next to to his wife Pilar Juncosa.

Miró was the only honorary member of ADLAN.

One of the last activities of ADLAN was the manifesto and exhibition on Logicophobist art in June 1936, where the group is configured as one of the nuclei of surrealism in the state.

Also the idea, due to the friendship between Miró and the musician Varèse, of organizing an International Olympiad of Creative Artists in Barcelona.

But the Civil War that ended many things, also did it with this group and all its initiatives and when the war broke out, it dissolves.

ADLAN had great links with another mythical group, the Group of Architects and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture (GATPAC) in its desire to break with tradition (modernist and noucentista) and bring architecture to modernity throughout Spain. The two shared objectives, founding members and headquarters on Passeig de Gràcia 99 in Barcelona. It was an architect, Sixte Illescas, who rescued all this documentation in the last days of the Civil War from the premises of the GATPAC and kept it in his professional office until he donated it to the College of Architects of Catalonia in 2008.

Source: elparis

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