The La Caixa Banking Foundation and the Joan Miró Foundation premiere this Wednesday the documentary The Tapestries of Joan Miró. From Thread to World. The excuse has been the restoration of the tapestry that has hung for 40 years at the entrance of the banking entity's central offices, on Avenida Diagonal, now exhibited at the CaixaForum in Madrid after passing through the one in Barcelona. It will be the first of three documentaries that the two entities will create jointly and that can be seen on the new Caixaforum+ platform.
The documentary, directed by Anna Sanmartí, takes advantage of the two-month update work on the tapestry to delve into this type of large-format works that the Catalan artist conceived together with Josep Royo starting in 1970. The artisanal and sacrificial creation process is explained, and the other tapestries are given a face, considering that there were only five in total and one, the one located in the WTC in New York, was lost with the 9/11 attacks. The Tapestries of Joan Miró. From Thread to World, with a duration of 40 minutes, includes the testimonies of Josep Royo, who gracefully recalls how Miró discovered him and they began to collaborate, and of Gloria Malé, one of the tapestry weavers, a historically invisibilized figure, who, moreover, performed the most arduous part.
But not everything was tapestries. Miró and Royo dared with the sobreteixims, fabrics with drawings to which objects such as umbrellas were adhered, and the burned cloths, those that, literally, Miró burned after painting them, always with caution. Anti-painting and a way of pushing art to the limit. In addition to the documentary, the restoration of the tapestry, done in public view for two months at the CaixaForum, will serve to carry out research on the creative process for weaving the tapestries, complemented by the work that the Miró Foundation also did with its tapestry.
The Tapestries of Joan Miró. From Thread to World is the first newly created content presented by Caixaforum+, where it can be viewed for free, like the rest of the content on this platform created by the La Caixa Foundation. Launched just over a month ago to disseminate cultural and scientific content, it has a catalog of 1,100 contents, from series, films and documentaries to podcasts, interviews, programs and concerts, and already has 22,000 subscribers.
This will not be the only documentary that both foundations will create. During the first half of 2023, two new productions will see the light. On the one hand, Miró íntimo, a film directed by Meritxell Colell and Jordi Morató about the artist's most personal and family facet based on the works he created for himself, his wife and his daughter, which constitute the bulk of the collection preserved by the Fundació Joan Miró. On the other hand, a documentary series directed by Niccolò Bruna will be released, focusing on the building that houses this legacy of the painter, in Montjuïc, focusing on the transfer of the archive, made up of more than 16,000 objects, which took place in the late eighties from the extension spaces designed by Jaume Freixa to the original spaces conceived by Miró himself and Josep Lluís Sert.
From the Miró Foundation, pieces documenting the exhibitions of the winning artists of the Joan Miró Prize will also be included in Caixaforum+, as well as projects from Espai 13, the annual exhibition cycle dedicated to emerging artists. Other cultural institutions included in the platform are The British Museum, the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Guggenheim Bilbao or the American Museum of Natural History.