Miró & Millares: Poétiques de la destruction: Paris

The friendship between Joan Miró (Barcelona, 1893 – Palma de Mallorca, 1983) and Manolo Millares (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1926 – Madrid, 1972) was deep and sincere, despite an age gap of over thirty years. The enigmatic Miró passionately supported the informalist rebels of the group “El Paso” (1957–1960), guiding them as evidenced in his letters and the monograph Papeles de Son Armadans (1959). He encouraged “the friends of El Paso”: “One must paint with feet on the ground, so that strength can enter through the feet.”

In early 1961, their simultaneous exhibitions in Paris (Miró at Galerie Maeght, Millares at Galerie Daniel Cordier) drew critical attention. Françoise Choay highlighted their connection, noting that Millares had “discovered Miró’s painting and lessons” as early as 1946. Their first personal meeting was in Barcelona in 1959 during the exhibition of four “El Paso” artists at Sala Gaspar, attended punctually by Miró. Poet Joan Brossa observed that “the fire of life roared sharply.”

 

This inaugurated a period of intense correspondence, including letters, postcards, and holiday greetings, often illustrated, sent to Millares and his wife. Miró shared details of his life, travels, and desire to see exhibitions of Velázquez or Zurbarán at the Prado.

These exchanges included dedications and gifts of books, catalogues, prints, posters, and portfolios such as Mutilados de paz (1965), featuring a poem by Rafael Alberti, sent to Miró by Millares. In the Spain of that time, Miró saw these works as examples of “rigour and dignity,” each set of images symbolizing the recent death of Millares’ father, another “mutilated by peace,” a life shattered despite the so-called “twenty-five years of peace.”

 

Miró also facilitated Millares’ access to French publications and helped him meet figures like Jacques Dupin. He attended Millares’ last solo exhibition in Barcelona (1969) and visited his show at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, which he praised as “very successful.” They met again in Santa Cruz de Tenerife for the inauguration of the “Exposición homenaje a Josep-Lluís Sert” (1972), shortly before Millares’ death.
Millares’ connection to Catalonia dates back to the early 1950s, before he moved to Madrid, including his first solo exhibition on the peninsula (Galerie Jardín, Barcelona, 1951) and contact with influential critics. Miró’s and Millares’ works also intersected in Madrid at the Sala Negra of the Contemporary Art Museum (Otro Arte, 1957) and the “Abstract Art Week” (1958).

Miró admired Millares’ recent tapestries and contributed to his international recognition, recommending him to Pierre Matisse Gallery and facilitating contacts with Galerie Daniel Cordier in Paris and Frankfurt. The “impetuosity” of Millares’ work, Miró wrote, was “an injection of potential into contemporary plastic art.”

Millares’ influences were manifold: Canarian aboriginal art, Miró, Goya, Castilla, as well as contemporary art and society. He paid tribute in Tríptico a Miró (1968) and attended Miró’s retrospective in Barcelona, calling it indispensable and thanking the artist “with all my heart.”

Miró attended numerous tributes and, upon Millares’ death, declared him “a very great painter,” expressing his grief at losing someone so young in his characteristically affectionate tone.

Looking at Miró’s works such as Tela cremada (1975), Cap (1972), or Object barbar (1952) at the Fundació Joan Miró, one can perceive the influence of Paul Klee on these two admirers. Both explored a sometimes surreal gaze and defended a poetics of plastic space. Millares’ mid-1950s pictographies are deeply Miró-inspired, as Françoise Choay noted in 1961. Miró nourished Millares’ work from the start, via Canarian critic Eduardo Westerdahl, while Miró’s prior presence in the Canary Islands through Gaceta de Arte and exhibitions reinforced this influence.

“One day someone will have to write a book on Miró’s influences,” Choay concluded. Both artists, like Miró, sometimes dismantled the pictorial space to reconstruct it, practicing the art of assemblage. Material traveled between them; canvas and jute became instruments of visual poetry. They were true poets of expression, exploring the pleasure and pain of existence.

 

Alfonso de la Torre