Documents 29. Miró Poet
The Fish that Slips through My Hands
Free, until full capacity is reached. Tickets may be collected at the Museo’s Ticket Offices or on the Museo Reina Sofía website from 10am on 22 October (a maximum of 2 per person). 20% of the visitor-capacity will be reserved for attendance without ticket collection on the day of the activity. Doors open 30 minutes before the activity
The Documents programme explores the relationships between art and publishing, and other subjects that include the effects of archive on narratives of art history, the artist’s book and publishing as an artistic practice. This fresh instalment examines an unexplored side of Joan Miró’s career: his poetic pursuit and the influence of poetry on his work. Therefore, the activity comprises a round-table discussion, conducted by specialists Olvido García Valdés, María González Menéndez and Carlos Martín García, and is centred on the analysis of a poetic text written by Miró, regarded as a possible manifesto of his artistic work. The interventions of these experts alternate with a reading, by Alberto Chessa, of this poem and other extracts from texts which foreground Miró’s interest in the practice of poetry.
The poetic text which gives rise to this activity accompanied Miró across his artistic trajectory. Originally conceived between 1936 and 1939, during the Spanish Civil War, it was part of a project for an artist’s book that was never realised in its original form. Nevertheless, Miró never relinquished the undertaking and the project would transcend its origin to become an example of a text of resistance: in 1971, the poem re-surfaced with the realisation of the artist’s books Le Lézard auxplumes d’or (The Lizard with the Golden Feathers) and Ubú auxBaléares (Ubú in the Balearic Islands), in which the artist rewrote the initial text, employing automatic writing and linking, through a similarity of sound, words that develop an impossible narrative. Thus, the text combines the raw tenderness of Paul Éluard, the double images of Guillaume Apollinaire and allusions to the sexual nature of Alfred Jarry. Such a remarkable document best reveals the way in which Miró spent decades struggling with the same poem without being able to detach himself from it. Written in French and translated into Spanish by Juan Gabriel López Guix, the poem is structured around various suites, which in the book are interrupted by visual elements projected during this Documents 29 edition.
During the activity, the reading of this poem accompanies a previous programmatic text, where the genesis of this unique poetic calling can be discerned: a letter Miró wrote to writer and poet Michel Leiris in 1924, in which, in addition to admitting his desire to appropriate the practice of poetry to mould it into the basis of his pictorial work, he expressed gratitude to poets for having bestowed on him new mediums of expression and creative approaches that extended beyond painting. That missive, offering a form of inconclusive poetic, reveals aspects related to his approach to poetry — key to an artist who in text found a way to “assassinate painting”, in addition to it constituting an ulterior challenge. As he wrote: “I agree with Breton when he speaks of the extremely poignant nature of a page of writing”.
Alberto Chessa is a writer, translator and voice artist. He is the author of six poetry books honoured with different distinctions, the last of which, Palabras para luego, is due to be published by Huerga & Fierro. Moreover, he has written a volume of essays about the film-maker Theo Angelopoulos (Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2015) and a book of aphorisms (Cypress, 2021). As a translator, his most recent publication is a version of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Twelve Sonnets from the Portuguese (Balduque, 2022), and as a voice artist, his voice can be heard over numerous advertising creations, documentaries and informational devices such as the audio-guide at the Alhambra in Granada, and on the online courses run by the Telefónica Foundation for the Museo del Prado and Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Olvido García Valdés is a poet and essayist. Among other honours, she has received the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry (2022), the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award (2021) and Spain’s National Poetry Prize (2007) for her book Y todos estábamos vivos (Tusquets, 2006). Her other books most notably include Esa polilla que delante de mí revolotea. Poesía reunida (1982-2008) (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2008); Lo solo del animal (Tusquets, 2012); confía en la gracia (Tusquets, 2020); dentro del animal la voz. Antología 1982-2012 (Cátedra, 2020); La caída de Ícaro (Commemorative Anthology, Universidad de Salamanca, 2022); and Entre 2001 y 2006. En el curso de ‘Y todos estábamos vivos’ (Péñola Blanca. César Manrique Foundation, 2024). She is also the author of the biographical essay Teresa de Jesús (Omega, 2001) and numerous texts for publications on the plastic arts, writing about artists such as Zush, Anselm Kiefer, Vicente Rojo, Antoni Tàpies, Juan Soriano and José Manuel Broto, among others.
María González Menéndez is an exhibition curator and museography expert. With a PhD in Art History from Paris-Sorbonne University and the Pilar Juncosa & Sotheby’s Honorary Research Award from the Pilar i Joan Miro à Mallorca Foundation, her work focuses on the oeuvre of Joan Miró, the subject of numerous specialised articles she has written. In recent years, she has curated different exhibitions in France and has worked with institutions such as the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, Centre Pompidou and Réunion des musées nationaux - Grand Palais (RMN-GP) as an exhibition project director.
Carlos Martín García is an art historian, exhibition curator and translator. He has served as head curator of plastic arts at Fundación Mapfre and has worked in institutions such as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Colección Banco de España. His most recent curatorial projects include the exhibitions Miró Poema (Fundación Mapfre, 2021), Leonora Carrington. Revelación (Arken Museum, Copenhagen and Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, 2022-2023) and RE-FORM. ¿Nos someten las imágenes? Colección “La Caixa” de arte contemporáneo (Museo Rath – Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, prev. 2024). He has also edited the book Cajal. El arte de la ciencia (La Fábrica, 2024).
Isabel Navarro Cerdán is the author of Inane (Ediciones Complutense, winner of the Blas de Otero Poetry Award), the poetry book Cláusula suelo (Huerga & Fierro, 2017) and the essay on Rosalía and feminism entitled Siete fragmentos sobre la ira femenina y 'hacer cuerpo' con el deseo en 'El mal querer' (Errata Naturae). Her poems have been translated into English and French and have featured in specialist publications such as Nayagua and Axolotl Magazine. From 2020 to 2021, she created and directed Fem Plural, a festival of theatre, music, comedy and feminist thought. She has also studied a PhD in English Language and Literature at the Complutense University of Madrid and was a visiting lecturer at the Universidad Anáhuac de Xalapa (Mexico). Since 2024, she has been the president of Genealogía, a feminist association of women poets.