Joan Miró i el despertar de l'art contemporani a Mallorca
Miró i Pelaires 1969-1983
Museu de Mallorca
28.10.25 - 15.06.26
Opening: 28 de octubre a las 19 h
Curator: Magdalena Aguiló Victory
Consell de Mallorca will open on Tuesday, October 28, 2025, the exhibition "Joan Miró i el despertar de l'art contemporani a Mallorca. Miró i Pelaires 1969-1983" ("Joan Miró and the Awakening of Contemporary Art in Mallorca. Miró and Pelaires 19691983"), a show that counts on the indispensable collaboration of Galeria Pelaires and the curatorship of Magdalena Aguiló, independent curator and former director of the Fundació Miró Mallorca.
The exhibition covers the period between the opening of Sala Pelaires in 1969 and the death of Joan Miró in 1983. Miró's remarkable generosity toward the young gallerist Pep Pinya and his team proved essential: the artist offered them the opportunity to exhibit both his own work and that of his circle of international artist friends. At the age of 77, Miró exhibited in Mallorca for the first time in 1970, and from then on he became a kind of artistic father to the new gallery, showing his work there on several occasions — as this exhibition illustrates.
Miró's generosity was also evident when, in 1973, he agreed to create the Sèrie Mallorca (Mallorca Series), in collaboration with Sala Pelaires — a series considered one of the finest within the artist's extensive graphic production. The exhibition presents the complete Mallorca Series, of which only a handful of collections worldwide hold all 36 works. This makes it one of the major highlights of the show. The Sèrie Mallorca (Mallorca Series) reflects the artist's deep connection with the island — a land he chose as his home and workplace, and to which he later donated his studios for the creation of the foundation we enjoy today.
The exhibition offers a journey through the relationship between Miró and Sala Pelaires, revealing the decisive role the artist played in the birth of contemporary art in Mallorca. Sala Pelaires became a key space for artistic and cultural avant-garde, a meeting point for leading writers, artists, and international cultural agents — a breath of fresh air for the stagnating cultural life of the late 1960s on the island.
Through historical documentation, posters, catalogues, press archives, and original works from the period — including gouaches, lithographs enhanced by the artist, serigraphs, drawings, and other pieces — the exhibition explores fourteen years of complicity and generosity between Miró, Sala Pelaires, and Mallorca. It was a period during which Miró established a profound bond with the island and placed it, for the first time, within the international artistic context.
This is a necessary retrospective, aiming to highlight the artist's support and involvement in promoting contemporary art on the island and to preserve a memory that must not be allowed to fade.
Within the framework of the "Year of Miró", promoted by the Government of the Balearic Islands, the Consell de Mallorca, and the City Council of Palma, this exhibition serves as the culmination that brings the most rooted perspective of the artist's bond with the island and his commitment to the awakening of Mallorcan contemporary art throughout the 1970s up to his death in 1983.
