A very wise decision…that needs to be executed carefully. A decision that, incidentally, can be used to go further. Aena’s announcement that the large ceramic mural created by Joan Miró with ceramist Josep Llorens Artigas in 1970 and which has greeted visitors to the old terminal at Barcelona Airport for decades will be moved to T1 designed by Ricardo Bofill received the applause of the cultural world yesterday. That he remembered, of course, the precision with which the artist calculated it for this space. A cultural world that, following this bet, demanded in many cases that the airport itself be named after Joan Miró, a figure of international prominence whose art, always connected to the sky, will now once again greet the majority of your travelers
Marko Daniel, director of the Joan Miró Foundation, highlighted yesterday that “it is a very good idea and in line with Miró’s intentions, who left fixed in his instructions that the mural could be moved if this terminal ceased to be the most important We at the foundation are very excited. Of course, it must be done well, the challenge is great in the transfer of a ceramic mural like this, and luckily there are still living people involved in its construction, especially the family of Joanet Artigas”. And he remembers that a “very clear precedent for this kind of transfer is Miró’s ceramic mural, of a smaller but very large size, which is in the MNAC and comes from the IBM headquarters in Barcelona. Contemporary mosaics and historical works have been moved many times, there are techniques, what is unique is the scale, it is one of the largest imaginable works. A mural that needs a new location, now it was lost”.
Aena has not yet spoken to them about the location, but points out that “looking at the terminal, as travelers we have had ideas of how it could be done, I will be happy to talk to Aena about the location and the procedure. I want it to have maximum visibility, it’s a magnificent mural that Miró invented to welcome all travelers. The more visible, the better. It has the capacity not only to welcome, but to do so with joy.”
The president emeritus of the Catalan art critics, Daniel Giralt-Miracle, remarks that “the transfer is fundamental, an intelligent idea. Transport must be done well, but we know a lot about this in Catalonia, I hope it will be a great achievement”. And he also remembers that “Miró’s idea of ??welcoming those arriving through the three points of entry to Barcelona is great. For the boats the mosaic of the plan de l’Os on the Rambla, for those arriving by road a sculpture in the Cervantes park – Woman, bird and a star, tens of meters long, which was not built and the model of which is at the Miró Foundation – and for the air the airport mural. To enter Barcelona is to enter Miró’s world”. And he asks that the airport “be called Joan Miró because it is more universal than the beloved Tarradellas”.
For the artist Frederic Amat, who has worked since the beginning of the nineties with the Artigas ceramists and is the patron of their foundation, “beyond the nostalgia of having been the stage for the departures and arrivals of Barcelona for so many years is very positive that the mural goes to the place it deserves, at the epicenter of arrival by air in Barcelona, ??which is what Miró wanted. May you have the embrace of this ceramic mural from this airport that today is called Tarradellas and that they could have given the name of Miró once it was done.”
Having said that, Amat recalls that “Miró was very meticulous with the intention and intuition he had with the spaces. Airport mural projects have a scale, a proportion. Sometimes these models, if they are not well thought out, end up with the wrong scale or location. It must be done carefully. In Miró there was a deep intention of the location, the weight of the stains and the great secret of his work, the balance. A bad arrangement or installation can break the balance of the mural. A relocation must be very well thought out, the proportion, how the light enters”.
Mateu Hernández, director general of Turisme de Barcelona, ??concludes that “as a key to the projection of the city to the world, it is very important that the gateway to the millions of visitors it has, whether for conferences or for leisure, has Miró well present. It is the best way to explain Barcelona to the world. For culture and for their genius”.
