Miró and Picasso, love and generosity

They say that no one dies for good until he is forgotten. We have been orphans of Picasso for fifty years, and Miró for forty. But both of them were concerned about leaving us their legacy in Barcelona. Picasso, through Jaume Sabartés, in the Gothic palaces of Carrer Montcada. Miró, in the Olympus of Montjuïc, under the skin of a magnificent building by Josep Lluís Sert.

This physical survival has become doubly redundant thanks to the Miró-Picasso exhibition which takes place, at the same time, in the respective Barcelona foundation and museum. Curated by Sònia Villegas and Teresa Montaner (Joan Miró Foundation), and Margarida Cortadella and Elena Llorens (Picasso Museum), with the curatorial assistance of Véronique Dupas, it explores the friendship that Miró and Picasso maintained throughout their lives, its coincidences and singularities in the artistic field, and its recognition in Barcelona.

At the age of fourteen, Picasso was one of the best figurative painters in the country. Miró, in the opinion of almost everyone, a lost case in this retinal reproduction of reality. The first will revolutionize the visible structure of art. The second will give faithful testimony to the underlying realism beneath the visible appearances.

Both have a common theme: fascination and, at the same time, terror towards the female condition. Dora Maar's bitter tears are nothing compared to Mironian voracious vaginas.

Miró met Picasso in 1917, on the occasion of his visit to Barcelona while accompanying Russian ballets. In 1918, the young painter of the Passage del Crèdit exhibited for the first time in the Sala Dalmau. The reviews were so negative, not to mention the non-existent sales and the anonymous ones received by the gallerist, that Miró made the leap to Paris without looking back...

Picasso exhibited for the last time in Barcelona in 1936. Then, the war. Miró and Picasso met at the Pavilion of the Republic in 1937 in Paris. Work by Sert and Luis Lacasa. Then, the Nazi invasion of France. Picasso opted for a low profile. Miró, to return quietly to Mallorca, then to Barcelona.

Picasso did not exhibit again until 1956, thanks to the Gaspar family of gallerists. Miró, in 1949, allowed a retrospective of his work at the Laietanes galleries, which Pierre Matisse, his gallerist, acquired in its entirety. He complained: "They don't love me here." He did not exhibit again until 1968, I imagine with his head on the future foundation. Ricard Mas