"Let my work be like a poem set to music by a painter"

Curated by Teresa Montaner and Elena Escolar, the Joan Miró Foundation's archive offers us the opportunity to discover, with Opening Archive 02, through the materials preserved, the commission the artist received in 1929 to illustrate the book Il était une petite pie. 7 chansons et 3 chansons pour Hyacinthe, by Lise Hirtz. This work offers a collection of 7 original songs, accompanied by 3 songs specifically dedicated to Hyacinthe, a fictional character created by Hirtz.

It was the poet Paul Éluard who sent Lise Hirtz's poems to Joan Miró on behalf of André Breton so that he could illustrate them, as they both considered the painter's way of working to be the most appropriate for these poems. Miró created eight pochoirs, an artistic technique that uses stencils to apply paint or ink to the surface, thus creating precise and repeatable images or patterns, and Georges Auric, to whom the book is dedicated, set five to music. The book was conceived as an artist's book, in folio format and presented in a folder with a print on the cover of Miró's interior illustration of the poem Table.

As the visionary artist that he was, Miró enjoyed exploring the intersection of painting with other disciplines, in this case literature. You can visit this exhibition until 29 October, during the Foundation's usual opening hours. Tickets, which can be purchased here, cost between 7 and 14 euros, and are free for Friends of the Foundation.