The most important aspect of the Joan Miró Foundation’s collections is without doubt its valuable stock of works consisting in over 14,000 items. Most of this collection was donated to the Foundation by Joan Miró himself. Other pieces have come from the collections owned by Pilar Juncosa,the artist’s wife,and Joan Prats,his close friend and the driving force behind the idea of setting up the Foundation.
The Foundation has a large collection of paintings from all the different periods of Miró’s life.The works exhibited show the development of his art from his training in Barcelona and first contacts with the avant-gardes in the early twentieth century,the time spent in Paris and his links with the Surrealists. Miró’s art in the last years of his life was mainly expressed in large-format paintings and denotes a deeper interest in pure colour and in gesture,but without abandoning his lyricism and compositional rigour.It is precisely this period that is most widely represented here,since he donated to the Foundation the works that were in his studio when it was set up. This guidebook is the main tool to achieve to the highlights of the Foundation’s collections.