Joan Miro Art Project

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In 1976 the Miro Museum was opened in Barcelona, Spain.

Miro had a tapestry in the World Trade Centre. It was one of the most expensive works of art that was destroyed by 9/11.

Miro died when he was 90.

In his life he painted around:

2000 paintings

5000 drawings and collages

500 sculptures

They sell for between £170,000 and £11.5 million.

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WHAT HAVE I LEARNED FROM THIS PROJECT

At first I was a bit worried about doing this project. It seemed like a lot of hard work and I was quite scared to start it.

Once I got started it was much better because I did things in small steps. First I chose my artist then I copied some of his easier paintings. My mum showed me how to sketch things out in very light pencil first and I got quite good at it by the end.

I think some of my paintings are better than I thought I could do at the start.

I enjoyed painting using different materials. My favourite was acrylic paint. Charcoal was very smudgy and quite messy but you can rub it out and you can stop the smudging by spraying hairspray on it!

I’ve learned about Abstract painting and how an artist’s style can change in his life.

I really liked going to the Tate Modern and can recognise the work of some different painters, especially Dali.

WHERE I WENT FOR INFORMATION

Internet:

artsmarts4kids.blogspot.com/2008/02/wassily-kandinsky.html

Art Galleries:

Tate Modern London

Royal Academy of Art London

Books –

Kandinsky by Hajo Duchting

I

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Interview with Sheena Wagstaff

Curator of the Tate Modern

I wanted to know what a Curator of the Tate thought about Miro’s work so I found out the email address of a Tate Curator, Sheena Wagstaff, and asked her these questions.

She was really kind to answer me and to give our class a free invitation to a Miro exhbition next year!

1. What are your thoughts about the work of Joan Miro?

You've chosen a favourite artist of mine. I like his earlier works especially the sunny scenes of the Catalan farm where he grew up, with flowers, rows of vegetables, animals and farm machinery. He was very particular about how he painted each detail because they were important to him - and also because his family and the community in which they lived needed farms to grow food so they didn't starve.

2. Do you prefer his earlier or later work?

I like both. In his later works he was experimenting with different kinds of materials, like old sacks and different kinds of paint, partly because he sometimes felt that paint and canvas were too ordinary to try to express how bad people felt living in Spain which was being ruled by a cruel dictator called General Franco.

Towards the end of Miro's life, when he was old and famous, Miro felt free do new big and weird paintings which have taken people a long time to work out.

3. Do you plan to have any more of Miro’s work in the TM (Tate Modern) in the future?

In fact Tate Modern is doing an exhibition of Miro's work in summer 2011, which includes some of these strange later paintings, which you and your class are invited to come to see!

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What I have enjoyed and learnt from my Project

I learnt a lot about modern art at the Tate Modern.

I enjoyed painting colourful pictures using different types of paint and charcoal. I liked oil pastels the most.

I learnt how to use charcoal, which is like painting with a twig! I found out how to stop it smudging by spraying hairspray on it!

I found that copying pictures is more difficult than it looks but it gets easier with practice.

I learnt that artists styles can change over their lifetime.

I understand what surrealism is now.

I realised that a picture doesn’t have to be perfect to look like the real thing!

Where I got my information

Galleries:

The Tate Modern, London

The Royal Academy of Art, London

Art Exhibitions

Arshile Gorky

Van Gogh and his letters

Books

Miro by Erben & Duchting

Internet

www.joanmiro.com

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/joan_miro

www.metroartwork.com/joan-miro-biography

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