BARCELONA.- Miró: Antoni Llena Constellation is a project conceived by the artist Antoni Llena in response to an invitation from the Fundació Joan Miró. Through the selection of drawings from the Collection, the proposal was for Llena to present the version of Miró that was closest to him.

Antoni Llena (Barcelona, 1942) interpreted the proposal as an opportunity to show the extraordinary drawings collection of the Fundació Joan Miró, which due to its fragility has only been exhibited on a few occasions. With the cooperation of the department of Collections, the artist has worked in the Fundació Archives for almost a year, researching the holdings in copious detail and tracing out a selection of sketches, notes and preparatory drawings that cover every period of Miró’s career.

The Fundació Archives is home to a wide-ranging collection of work on paper and other documents related to Joan Miró. The most important part of this collection is comprised of a body of some 8000 pieces, including preparatory drawings, models and annotations made by the artist over the course of his career, which was donated to the Fundació. It also features a virtually complete collection of his printmaking and specialised limited-edition books, along with documentary material, with correspondence, photographs and other resources, all told constituting a leading source for the study and research of the work of Miró.

Antoni Llena has focused on Miró’s drawings because, in the words of Teresa Montaner, Head of the Fundació Joan Miró Collection, “they need to be seen in a relaxed manner, especially because, as an instinctive form of expression, they represent the most genuine action of the creative act.” Of the almost 8000 drawings conserved in the Archives, Llena has selected 150 which have impressed him the most. This selection has not been made rationally; it is based instead on aesthetic emotion. Llena rejects academic discourse and even strives to distance himself from his previous knowledge of the artist, so as to discover him anew.

Many of the drawings selected are at the origin of Miró’s best-known works, although there are many others which were made for works that were never completed, despite having worked on them insistently for years through his drawing. According to Antoni Llena, these drawings are amongst Miró’s least colourful works, yet also his most iconoclastic. For Llena, they are “the genesis, the first impulse of the most admired side of Miró. An initial urge that concentrates impressive intensity and emotion. The most intimate side of Miró”.

In most of these drawings, Miró uses graphite pencil, charcoal and pastel, amongst other techniques. In the later works he intensifies his use of pen and coloured pencil.

Once the selection was made, Llena sought to reconnect these drawings into a large mural constellation that fits into the collection as an art intervention, filling an entire gallery to create an immersive experience. The installation visualises the multiple and diverse aspects that were present together in Joan Miró’s work. These are features that Llena recognises in himself, even though in many cases there is no formal resemblance. As an exceptional circumstance, Llena presents the entire career of Miró in a single gallery through his drawing, from his childhood to his final expressions as an artist.

In dialogue with this constellation of drawings, the Fundació Joan Miró has chosen to include two works by Antoni Llena that capture the spirit of Miró, and, as Montaner comments, they “remind us that the aim of art does not rest in the work itself, but in its capacity to arouse the emotions of others”.

A pioneer in experimental practices from the 1960s in conceptual art and Arte Povera, Antoni Llena has always questioned artistic limits and aesthetic categories. His work is heir to the legacy of the tradition of three-dimensional artistic experimentation in Miró, and likewise stands out for its radical critique of dogmatism. Nakedness, lightness and fragility have been key interests over the course of his career, characterised as it is for the essentiality of minimalist work with a potent poetic charge. Amongst his many projects, in recent years Llena has dedicated himself to the daily task of drawing, conceived as the writing of thought and as a personal diary.