Fundació Miró

In 1972 Joan Miró asked his friend Josep Lluís Sert to design a home for his art in his native Barcelona. He loved Sert’s earlier Foundation Maeght in St-Paul-de-Vence and the distinctive white building Sert designed for the artist, with galleries bathed in natural light, has much the same charm. The collection grew so much that in 1986 Sert’s collaborator, Jaume Freixa, extended the building in the same style.

The heart of the foundation’s collections, naturally enough, are paintings, sculptures, textiles and drawings made by Miró between 1917 and the 1970s. Among the earlier works are 12 tiny oil paintings on wood panels, such as the precise and exquisite Flame in Space and Nude Woman (1932), which blazes with sharp, jewel-like colours.