Joaquim Mir

JOAQUIM MIR TRINXET (Barcelona, 1873 - 1940).
"Landscapes".
Oil on canvas.
Attached certificate issued by Don Marcial Barrachina Ramoneda.
Presents sticker on the back of Barrachina and Ramoneda.
It has a carved wooden frame with gilded ornamentation.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 39 x 46 cm; 66,5 x 74,5 cm (frame).
This work is characteristic of the hedonistic and audacious language of Joaquim Mir in his interpretation of painting. He reduces it to its basic elements through an excellent handling of light and color, but at the same time he avoids pure abstraction, always suggesting the pulse that beats beneath the forms. Thus, the architectures are flamboyant, and the forms are pure chromatic agitation and the changing lights of the day are conjugated in symphonic cadences. In this work Mir demonstrates his absolute mastery of the technique and the capture of the landscape, in an image in which he manages to synthesize the naturalistic representation, the personal expression and the pictorial order. We see a sensitive brushstroke, which explores the space and gives it form and entity, creating volumes, lights and shadows, defining an atmosphere captured with great lyricism. Through a purely personal language, Mir synthesizes the basic elements of representation and expressiveness of painting, as can be seen in the intensity of his colors or in the rigor of his compositional structure.

Joaquim Mir studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Jordi in Barcelona and in the workshop of the painter Luis Graner. He soon felt uncomfortable with the official teaching, anchored in a conception of realist painting, so in 1893 he founded with other colleagues the "Colla del Safrà", to investigate together in the pictorial initiatives of the end of the century. In 1896 they even participated as a group in the III Exhibition of Fine Arts and Artistic Industries, to which Mir presented two works: "La huerta del rector" and "El vendedor de naranjas". Also, since 1897 he frequented the artistic environment of "Els Quatre Gats", which helped him to mature in the compositional study of landscapes with figures in different planes of depth. During these years he took part in the Fine Arts Exhibitions of Barcelona, in their editions of 1894, 1896 and 1898. Winner of a second medal at the Madrid Exhibition of 1899, that same year he moved to the capital in order to compete for a scholarship in Rome. When he was unsuccessful, he went with Santiago Rusiñol to Mallorca, on a trip that would be a definitive turning point in his career. Mir was dazzled by the Mallorcan landscape, which was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him. From then on, the artist deployed a whole combination of impossible colors, the result of his personal interpretation of the majestic nature of the island. The brushstrokes became longer and became stains that almost made objects and spatial references disappear. In 1901 he exhibited the fruit of this first Mallorcan stage individually at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, and again obtained a second medal at the National Exhibition. In 1907 he obtains the first medal at the International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Barcelona. Since then, installed in Camp de Tarragona, he will not move from the landscape genre, but now the surrounding villages will be the protagonists of his painting. In 1917, when he was awarded the National Prize of Fine Arts, he received the definitive national recognition. In 1929 he won the first medal at the International Exhibition in Barcelona. The following year he won the medal of honor at the National Exhibition in Madrid, an award he had been pursuing since 1922. Although he was mainly a native painter, he had solo and group exhibitions in Washington, Paris, Pittsburg, New York, Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires and Venice. Mir is today considered the most outstanding representative of Spanish post-impressionist landscape painting. His work is preserved in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Prado Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, among many others.