‘portrait of mistress mills 1750’

mixed media on board
1200mm x 1200mm
Kim Pieters 2018

from ‘the guitar lesson’ series
seven paintings

We also had visits from Kahnweiler, after he became Masson’s dealer, and from his friends and painters, Lascaux and Beaudin. I liked them well enough, but I didn’t take to their painting. I remember Masson had raging discussions with Beaudin about Nietzsche, whom Beaudin found insufferable.

Kahnweiler only came once to my studio. He looked at all my paintings attentively without saying a word. And he never came back.

Another day, Aragon had sent Jacques Doucet to Masson, who brought him to my studio. He was another who did not say a word. But once he was outside, alone with Masson, he said: “Your neighbour is raving mad!”

Joan Miró ‘Souvenir de la rue Blomet’
Unpublished memoir, transcribed by Jacques Dupin, 1977

from
‘I’m going to smash their guitar’ Joan Miró 1917-1934
catalogue to the exhibition “La Naissance du Mode“
(Birth of the World)
in Galerie 1,Centre Pompidou from 3 March to 28th June.
Paris.France.2004.

…The rue Blomet meant above all else friendship, exchange and exalted discovery among a marvellous group of friends. The regulars at these meetings in Masson’s studio were, first of all Michel Leiris, who remained my closest friend, and Roland Tual, Georges Limbour and Armand Salacrou. We talked, we drank a lot. At that time we drank brandy and water and curaçao mandarins. People arrived generally by the Métro, by the famous Nord-Sud which linked Montmartre, where the Surrealist were, and the backward lot in Montparnasse.

Nord-Sud, like the magazine that Reverdy ran, which I had so many times rifled through during my youth in Barcelona. Volontaires station. And the famous Métro entrances that reminded me of the great Gaudí, who had so influenced me. The number of arrows, of birds in flights in my work, comes from the portals of the Guimard Métro station…

Joan Miró ‘Souvenir de la rue Blomet’
Unpublished memoir, transcribed by Jacques Dupin, 1977

from
‘I’m going to smash their guitar’ Joan Miró 1917-1934
catalogue to the exhibition “La Naissance du Mode“
(Birth of the World)
in Galerie 1,Centre Pompidou from 3 March to 28th June.
Paris.France.2004.