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Gaudí and Miró, classmates Looked, to the right and upside down and Looked, and the way of dreaming the world
The universal screening of Looked cannot be understood without New York and the work of his american dealer, Pierre Matisse. The historian Élisa Sclaunick just published by Pierre Matisse, & Miró. Ouvrir le feu. Correspondance croissée, 1933-1983 (L’atelier contemporain), a book that brings together for the first time the whole of an epistolary imperative to document the history of the art of the TWENTIETH century, rich with letters, unpublished writer Jacques Dupin, the art dealer Pierre Loeb and André Breton.
Pierre Matisse (Bohain-en-Vermandois, 1900-Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, 1989) was the art dealer in new york Giacometti, Dubuffet, Chagall, Balthus, or Tanguy, but above all it was a gallery owner and one of the friends more faithful than he Looked. Son of Henri Matisse, had moved to New York in 1924, fleeing from a marriage fool and the wrath of his father-in-law, father corso of Clorinde Peretti, that he had been threatened of death for having abandoned her daughter. In the united STATES was associated with the gallery owner, Valentin Dudensing, who worked as scouting in Paris. In 1928, Pierre Loeb, the art dealer of Looked at him, gave him a box of Catalan, Peinture, but his eye was not accustomed to such language, pictorial, and he was cornered in a closet of his home in New York. It was not until years later that he rediscovered it.
In April 1934, Matisse has achieved the exclusive rights of Looked to US: “You” wrote Miró, “the son of a great painter, you know better than I that represents the life of an artist, and you have been a witness of the life of struggle and later his formidable success.” He gave three-quarters of its production of a year, shared with Loeb, to change from a monthly pay, between the two galleries, of 2,000 francs (a little more than 900 euros today). In the letters, Looked at him, scolds for delays in pay (“If you do not charge regularly, I can not live”) and share confidences: “My work I think that will transport you to a world of real unreality”.
The history of the thirties late in the match, with moments of agonizing, as the leak Looked to Paris during the Civil War (the killing of his brother-in-law, the burning of the chapel of their house in Mont-roig…) and the impact of the conflict on his painting: “We are living through a hideous drama that will leave deep footprints in my mind… All my friends advise me that I stay in France. If it were not for my wife and my daughter I would return to Spain”.
Pilar Juncosa, Patricia and Pierre Matisse and Miró in an exhibition, in 1953. SUCCESIÓ MIRÓ
they Are the most tragic moments of the painter, barely tempered by the pride that is in the commission of a mural for the pavilion of the Republic in Paris: “Only Picasso and I have been requested”. And the January 2, 1939: “We are very distressed because the offensive of the rebels is more and more near Mont-roig, where it remains still my mother. I am convinced that at the end we will crush the monster fascist”. Without time to recover from the defeat, starts a leak of the peaceful Varengeville, when the germans invade in Normandy and planted in a few days in Paris. Matisse had advised him in 1938 exile in Mexico, and his friends (Masson, Sert, Calder), to the united STATES, but found no passage, and your wife beseeches you to return to Spain. Trapped on the border, writes: “I have decided to return home. I think that is the smartest thing I can do at this time to safeguard the Pillar and the girl and reassure our worried families”.
he Looked to be hidden in Mallorca, and write the letters with the name of his wife in order to not be detected. He returned to Barcelona in 1942, attenuated the risk of being arrested. The loneliness of Looked is absolute, and communications with the U.S. so deficient that the artist, unable to sell, it is believed abandoned by his gallerist american to the point that it is the brazilian Paulo Duarte, who negotiates with the MoMA exhibition of the masterpiece he has been painting in Varengeville. Matisse reivindicaría their rights and in the end, organizing at his gallery, in 1945, the exposure that would mean the definitive consecration of Miró, seated after his first trip to New York in 1947.
The artist, hardened by years of hardship, gives an ultimatum to her two dealers, Matisse, and Loeb. “Or achievement to be able to live as they did at my age (52 years), the men of the preceding generation (Picasso, Matisse, Braque), or I manage to cancel my debts, which will make selling a property, and with what I have I will go to live in Mont-roig, where I will continue to work with the same passion and enthusiasm that I have always done, because that is a necessity for me and my reason for living, but ceasing completely any foreign trade, lucky that no one hears you talk more, nor of me nor of my work.” Matisse accepts the challenge; Loeb did not, and he Looked firm, in 1948, contract for Europe with the gallery owner Aimé Maeght, which represented a new way of understanding the trade of art.
Matisse did not hesitate in facilitating the arrival of money Looked at in the Spanish autarky: it invented a code according to which, an engraving meant to $ 1,000, and a catalog, 100. Even after a walk to the border francoandorrana, came to be beaten by four police officers and jailed for three weeks, to be discovered attempting to smuggle $ 3,000 to Looked hidden in a box of toothpaste.
The mural of the UN that could not be
In the correspondence between Miró and Matisse gives news of important projects that were not carried out. As a mural for the Hall of delegates (48 meters long) of the UN headquarters, of which there are mock-ups. On the 19th of march of 1952, Matisse realizes to he Looked of the order. The mural is not done due to lack of budget. Another project thwarted was a large sculpture for Central Park, in 1972, in a play area for children. Looked thought a female figure with a huge vagina (maternity). The City of New York found it inappropriate. It also rejected the Hirshhorn Museum of Washington. There are copies in Texas, Milan and Jeddah (Saudi Arabia).
