The abstract painting Peinture-poème (Musique, Seine, Michel, Bataille et moi) comes from the painter’s famous series of dream paintings. It depicts, as the text on it shows, a walk by the artist with the surrealist writer Michel Leiris and philosopher and writer Georges Bataille along the Seine. The curls in the air that resemble fireworks would be circles in the water. Miró (1893-1983) herself said about the painting: ‘I loved making circles in the water. I loved the reflections and the changing colors in changing light. Shortly afterwards I painted a painting that evoked the riverside walks.’
big gap
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has an important collection of surrealist art, with works of art by Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Leonora Carrington, among others. According to director Sjarel Ex, this collection is world famous. There are ‘weekly, if not daily’ requests for loan from museums worldwide. According to State Secretary Gunay Uslu, this Miró is an enrichment for the Netherlands Collection ‘because of the influence Miró had on the Cobra group’.
The Rotterdam museum had been preying on a Miró for a long time. André Breton, the founder of the imaginative art movement, called Miró ‘the greatest surrealist of us all’. In 1987, the then director Coert Ebbinge Wubben said in an interview: ‘The two big gaps are Tanguy and Miró, and I fear they will never come back.’
In 2007, however, the museum still managed to a work of art by Yves Tanguy to acquire. And now, with the help of the Rembrandt Association and the Mondriaan Fund, among others, we have succeeded in obtaining a Joan Miró. According to the museum, it is the most expensive acquisition ever made by Boijmans.
Half a year
End of last year Christie’s auction house announced that this ‘masterpiece’ would be auctioned from the collection of the Swiss Volkart Stiftung. It is estimated to bring in 8 to 12 million euros. However, it was not sold then. Through Christie’s, the museum was brought into contact with the Volkart Stifting. They were prepared to give the Dutch museum six months to raise enough money. The canvas has been shown regularly in exhibitions, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Albertina Museum in Vienna.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is currently closed for a large-scale renovation that will last until at least the autumn of 2028. Highlights from Boijmans’ collection of surrealists are currently on a world tour and have already been exhibited in New Zealand, South Korea and Mexico. Joan Miró’s canvas is now displayed among the ‘collection highlights’ in Boijmans’ publicly accessible depot. The Miró hangs there in the company of works by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Basquiat and Breughel.