I was in Barcelona three weeks ago to celebrate my mother’s significant birthday, with my brother and sister, and the unexpected big hit of the trip was the Fondación Joan Miró museum, up at Montjuïc.
We went to the Picasso museum downtown the day before, and the contrast between the two is striking; the Fondación Miró is on a hillside, cooled by light breezes, rather than glowering in a city-centre palace, and also Miró just comes across as a happier and nicer person than Picasso. His art is great and I particularly love his sculptures.
We all loaded up with souvenirs from the museum shop, and one of mine was this lovely little picture book about Miró’s life, written by Gemma Gallardo, illustrated by Marta Altés and translated by Deborah Bonner. This is the third of the double-spread pages.
After spending day after day sitting in an office, Miró ended up getting ill. The only solution was for him to move to the family’s farm in Mont-roig de Camp and be close to nature, which he loved so much.
Right:
That was how he finally managed to convince his family that the only thing he could really do was devote all his time to painting.
It has only 32 pages, but it is very sweet and intended to enthuse younger (and older) readers with the urge to express themselves in art. The Spanish Civil war is efficiently dealt with on one page, and the Second World War on another. You won’t learn a lot from it, but you will smile. You can get The Long Journey of Joan Miró here.
