Joan Miró's discarded Central Park project unveiled at the Fundació Miró Mallorca
The exhibition can be visited until next February.
PalmA huge sculpture, both monumental and intended for children's play, with obvious references to the siurells, located in Central Park, in the epicenter of New York. This was the project that Joan Miró developed for three years and which, due to disagreements with the promoters, he finally abandoned. All the material generated—drawings, models, correspondence, and other working documents—is now on display for the first time in a single place: in the exhibition. A Miró in Central Park: The unrealized dream of a monumental sculpture in New York, curated by Patricia Juncosa, which can be seen from this Thursday until next February 22nd in the Pilar Juncosa Library of the Miró Mallorca Foundation.
It all began in 1972, when Margit Rowell, curator of the Guggenheim Museum and member of the New York City Cultural Council, commissioned Joan Miró. The idea was for the artist to create a piece to be located in a children's playground on one of the sidewalks by the lake in Central Park. "It had to be the first contemporary intervention that had been made," explains Biel Noguera, head of the Pilar Juncosa archive and library, "and the first sketches were shaped like a clothespin, very similar to a sculpture that she ended up making a few years later.
Los Angeles, which had also been discarded." He worked there for three years, eventually completing a polychrome model just over half a meter high that can also be seen in the exhibition. "It refers to Miró's characters, and in this case also to the siurells, due to the colors used [yellow, red, and green, as well as black and white], and to motherhood, due to the shape and contents of the womb," Noguera continues.
However, the conversations between the promoters and the artist did not come to fruition: one of the drawbacks was, precisely, the size of the piece. "We have a whole series of photomontages that are very interesting because they exemplify why it was never made," explains Noguera, "such as one where the planned size of the sculpture and the contrast with Miró's idea are clearly visible. It is a photograph showing a man next to the piece, which might make us think of a sculpture of one. There are some ballpoint pen notes by Miró himself, including a little man drawn at the feet of the sculpture: he was thinking of a work of 10 or 15 meters." This difference in approach, which resulted in increased costs for both installation and materials, as well as maintenance, was one of the main reasons why the project never came to fruition. "It's not that they decided not to do it; it's that they simply dropped the project," Noguera points out.
Miró and the United States
"This project also shows us the Miró that could have been but wasn't, because on the one hand it tells us about a Miró who wanted to monumentalize himself, with these large dimensions, and on the other, about one who wanted children to be able to interact. We have other documents that clearly show that this was the intention, to generate this game with the children and the public who visited Central Park," concludes Pilar Juncosa, head of the archive. This exhibition by the Miró Mallorca Foundation also complements the program of Miró and the United States, an exhibition that opens this Friday at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona and offers a tour of the numerous and beneficial links, as well as the evident and mutual influence, between Miró and American artists.
