The Fundació Joan Miró explores the connection between Miró and North American art in a new exhibition

The Fundació Joan Miró has created a unique exhibition that delves into the mutual influence between Joan Miró and the United States art scene during the 20th century. Entitled Miró and the United States , the exhibition —organized in collaboration with the prestigious The Phillips Collection in Washington— will be on view in Barcelona from October 10, 2025 to February 22, 2026.

The exhibition reveals a renewed look at Miró's career through his dynamic and two-way relationship with American art. This connection was not only a source of personal inspiration for the Catalan artist, but also a driving force of transformation for several generations of American artists. The project thus offers a narrative that goes beyond individual analysis to focus on the creative and intergenerational dialogue that was established between two shores of the Atlantic.

• Atelier 17, meeting point for European and American artists in New York, Martin Harris (SFAM), Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Photo: © Martin Harris.

With a total of 138 pieces including paintings, drawings, sculptures, engravings, films and archival documents, the exhibition offers a broad and profound journey through the intersections between Miró and essential creators of modern and contemporary art such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Louise Bourgeois, John Chamberlain and Salvador Dalí, among many others. This wealth of works allows us to better understand how the exchange of ideas took place and how it was reflected in the artistic languages of the time.

In addition to the works on display, Miró and the United States incorporates new studies by renowned specialists that shed light on the key stages of Miró's artistic evolution in relation to the North American context. These works offer a critical and updated review of the artist's role on the international scene, emphasizing his impact on the other side of the ocean and his capacity to transform himself through contact with other artistic cultures.

• Helen Frankenthaler – Canyon, (Canón), 1965 , The Phillips Collection, Washington. Dreier Fund of Acquisitions and Funds Donated by Gifford Phillips, 2001.

During the presentation to the press this Thursday, the director of the Foundation and curator of the exhibition, Marko Daniel , highlighted that this proposal offers a "new perspective on the work of Joan Miró and his connection with artists from the United States."

The exhibition not only celebrates the figure of Miró, but also opens the door to reflect on how international cultural and artistic flows have shaped 20th century art. An essential proposal for understanding Miró in a global context and for rediscovering the power of dialogue between artists and diverse contexts.

Miró and the United States is not just an exhibition, but an invitation to rediscover the Catalan master from a hitherto little-explored angle: his profound and transformative relationship with the North American art world. Moving away from the traditional gaze focused on the Parisian context —essential for understanding Miró's beginnings during the 1920s and 1930s—, this exhibition proposes a shift in focus: it is the United States that now becomes the key scenario for understanding the evolution of his artistic language and the breadth of his international impact.

In this transatlantic journey, the American territory appears as a space of opportunities, freedom and experimentation. A place where Miró was able to dream on a grand scale and realize monumental projects such as Moon, Sun and a Star , an emblematic public work conceived for the city of Chicago. At a time when Spain could not offer him the conditions to realize such ambitious visions, the American continent opened the doors to another creative dimension.

• Joan Miró Message d'ami [Message from a Friend] , 1964, Tate. Acquired with the collaboration of the collections bequeathed by HM Arbuthnot through the Friends of the Tate Gallery, 1983.

The open, innovative and constantly ebullient spirit of the North American art scene acted as a catalyst for Miró's expressive freedom, fueling his indomitable spirit and helping to consolidate him as a figure of reference on an international scale. This exhibition invites us to read Miró through this intense and fruitful dialogue with other North American creators, and to discover how this exchange enriched his work, giving it new forms, new spaces and new horizons.

As part of the exhibition Miró and the United States , the Fundació Joan Miró offers the unique opportunity to contemplate the 22 stencils on paper from the Constellations series, made in 1959. These examples, conceived by Miró with the intention that they could be observed from both sides of the paper, maintain the poetic and visual spirit of the original Constellations , one of the artist's most emblematic series.

Another of the exhibition's major highlights is the presence of the monumental work Pintura mural, 20 març , a large-format piece that had a prominent exhibition career in the 1960s. Since architect Josep Lluís Sert donated the mural to the Harvard Art Museums, this is the first time that it has been allowed to be loaned for an exhibition in Europe, which underlines the exceptional nature of the exhibition.

In addition, for the first time, the two first works that Miró exhibited in the United States can be seen together: Le Renversement and Pintura , which were initially presented at the Brooklyn Museum. This unprecedented meeting allows us to retrace Miró's first steps on the North American art scene and better understand the impact that his work had from the very beginning on this new international stage.