III Joan Miró International Symposium

The Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca is hosting the III International Symposium on Joan Miró, a meeting that brings together prominent specialists who have investigated different aspects of the life and work of Joan Miró and his relationship with the architect Josep Lluís Sert.

The presentations will contextualize the collaboration between the artist and the architect in the Mallorcan workshop and delve deeper into Miró’s creative process, as well as some of the key themes and motifs of his production.

This symposium is part of the events commemorating the 70th anniversary of the completion of the Sert Workshop, a fundamental space for understanding the artist’s Mallorcan stage. The sessions will also offer a space for debate and shared reflection on the validity of his artistic vision.

Programming of the lecture series

Friday, May 15

• 5 p.m. Opening of the Symposium with a presentation by Antònia M. Perelló
• 5.15 p.m. Presentation entitled “Sert’s workshop for Joan Miró: an architectural essay”, given by Jaume Freixa
• 6.15 p.m. Presentation entitled “Words Found: The Lost Conversations Between Miró and Sert”, given by Patricia Juncosa

• 10 a.m. Presentation entitled “Looking at Miró again”, given by Josep Massot
• 11.30 a.m. Coffee break
• 12 a.m. Presentation entitled “Son Abrines: The Home of Joan Miró i Pilar Juncosa (1954-1956) and the Printmaking Studio (1972-1973)”, given by Guillem Aloy Bibiloni
• 1 p.m. Talk
• 2 p.m. Closing of the Symposium

With the collaboration of the Council of Mallorca.

Biography

Jaume Freixa is an Architect (1966) with a PhD in Architecture from the U.P.C. (1993) and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University (M.Arch.II 1978). He spent his first professional stage with Josep Lluis Sert, in his Cambridge office, MA as head of European projects. These include the expansion of the Fondation Maeght in France, the Les Escales Park housing (FAD award 1975) and the Miró Foundation, both in Barcelona. Upon returning to Barcelona in 1979, he alternated teaching at the Escola Técnica Superior d’Arquitectura del Vallès with practicing his profession. In the academic field, he was a Full Professor of Architectural Projects and held several management positions within his Department, the ETSAV and the faculty of the U.P.C. In the professional field he is the author, among other works: of the studio of the painter Tàpies in Campins, the house, studio and library of the painter Frederic Amat in Vallvidrera, Sert houses on the Bellaterra Campus of the U.A.B., extensions of the Fundació Joan Miró (1988 and 2001), the Galileu Gal·lilei public school in El Prat de Llobregat, the “Auró” Public School and Headquarters of the College of Dentists of Catalonia, all in Barcelona, ​​extension and rehabilitation of the Museum of Modern Art in Ceret and the Ludovic Massé School, in Perpignan. His work has been published in Spanish, French and German magazines. He has been the curator of two traveling exhibitions on the work of Josep Lluís Sert and participated in numerous conferences and symposia in France, Italy, the United States and Spain on various topics of Architecture. He is the author of two books on the work of J.LL. Sert and has published book chapters and articles in several architectural magazines. Between 2009 and 2019 he was president of the board of trustees of the Fundació Joan Miró. On November 17, 2022, he joined the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona as a full member.

Title of the presentation:

Sert’s workshop for Joan Miró: an architectural essay

Synopsis:

Miró and Sert: a friendship that includes important artistic collaborations. An intense look at the architecture of the Studio: features that come from the past and features that announce the future in Sert’s work. Sert’s prodigious decade: a biographical moment. Sert within the architectural culture of the moment.

Biography

Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini (Palma, 1971) is the Curator and Head of the Art and Research Department at the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca. After fifteen years in the United States dedicated to teaching and curating architecture and design exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, she returned to where it all began: Joan Miró’s creative territory in Mallorca, with the studio designed by Josep Lluís Sert. The relationship between Miró and Sert and the spaces they created for the arts was the subject of her PhD dissertation, presented at the School of Architecture in Barcelona in 2002. It also informed the publications Miró-Sert in Their Own Words. Correspondence 1937-1980 (FPJM/CENDEAC 2009) and Josep Lluís Sert. Conversations and Writings. Meeting places for the arts (Gustavo Gili, 2011). Her journey came full circle when she joined the Foundation in 2017, where she continues to explore the shared ideas and mutual influences between artist and architect through exhibitions, lectures, and publications.

Title of the presentation:

Words Found: The Lost Conversations Between Miró and Sert

Synopsis:

The presentation reinterprets the design process of the Mallorca studio through a set of unpublished letters from Sert, Miró, the engineer Ochoa, and Pilar and Enric Juncosa, covering the construction period between 1954 and 1956. These forgotten conversations, now recovered for the Foundation’s archives, answer long-standing questions and complete the creative dialogue between architect and artist in the shaping of the Studio.

Biography

Josep Massot Ramis d’Ayreflor (Palma, 1956) is a cultural journalist and writer, with a consolidated career in the field of criticism and artistic dissemination. He was a founding member of the newspaper El Día de Baleares and has developed his professional activity in media such as La Vanguardia and El País, where he has specialized in cultural information. Author of reference works such as Joan Miró. The child who talked to the trees (2018) and Joan Miró under Francoism (1940–1983) (2021), he has researched in depth the life, historical context and international projection of the artist, based on testimonies and unpublished documentation.

Title of the presentation:

Looking at Miró again

Synopsis:

The intervention will address, on the occasion of the commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of Joan Miró’s decision to establish Palma as his permanent residence, the significance of this fact both in the artist’s career and in the cultural context of the island. The role that Mallorca played as a workspace and reference in a key stage of his production will be analyzed, as well as its contribution to the cultural projection of the Mallorcan environment.

Within this framework, attention will be paid to some of the main lines of his artistic evolution during the following decades, with special consideration of the large triptychs, understood as one of the moments of greatest intensity and synthesis of his work.

The presentation will combine historical and artistic approaches, leaving open the consideration of other aspects relevant to the understanding of the period.

Biography

Guillem Aloy-Bibiloni is the Director of ADEMA’s School of Design and a Lecturer in Fine Arts at ADEMA-UIB. Holding a Ph.D. In History and Theory of Architecture from ETSAB, his work as an architect and researcher bridges architecture, theatre studies, and art theory. Alongside his published research in Academic Journals, he has been a visiting critic and lecturer at the Chelsea College of Arts (UAL), ENSA Paris-Malaquais, the Aarhus School of Architecture and the Berliner Hochschule für Technik, among others. Previously, he was a researcher and lecturer at UPC-ETSAB Barcelona and held the Pilar Juncosa’s Research Fellowships at the Miró Mallorca Foundation in 2024-2025.

Title of the presentation:

Son Abrines: The Home of Joan Miró i Pilar Juncosa (1954-1956) and the Printmaking Studio (1972-1973)

Synopsis:

Drawing on research supported by the Pilar Juncosa’s & Sotheby’s Grant, Guillem Aloy-Bibiloni examines the less known architectures of the Miró’s family in Mallorca: Son Abrines, their own home, 1954-1956, and the unbuilt project for the third atelier of the artist, after the well-know Studio Sert and Son Boter, 1972-1973.

Following a historiographical and morphological methodology, the research draws on a corpus of previously unpublished primary sources, including original architectural plans, personal correspondence, and photographs retrieved from the family archives. These findings complement existing studies by providing a new understanding of the Miró habitat in Mallorca, shifting the focus from the isolated studio to a complex domestic-artistic system.