Joan Miró sota el franquisme (1940-1983)

When, after the Civil War, the Franco regime imposed its dictatorial regime in Spain, Joan Miró took refuge in Mallorca, where the family of his wife, Pilar Juncosa, lived. From there, and from his workshop in the Passatge del Crèdit that he still keeps in Barcelona, Miró concentrates on continuing his work and, what is most surprising, on becoming one of the central figures of the international art scene of post-war, from a miserable, defeated and isolated Mallorca and Barcelona. In this fascinating book, the result of scrupulous research in public and private archives here and around the world, Josep Massot reveals Miró's fierce struggle to keep his art in permanent innovation and dodge the pressures of the regime. pro-Franco, and also his fighting ethic to set an example and help the younger generations, raised in the dictatorship. The book reveals how it was American anti-fascist friends who saved him from isolation during World War II, and how the MoMA, the New York School -Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko- and artists like Louise Bourgeois hailed him as the most influential living artist in the world. When the cultural cold war broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union, Miró maintained his convictions for an art that was not subject to any economic or political strategy and defended the artist's freedom above all else. But in addition to an innovative biography of Miró, the book also details the role of the new avant-garde in the late forties and fifties, revealing -among other contributions- the surprising involvement of Nazi refugees in Spain in the promotion of abstract art.