Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró,


Mallorca


Above The Moneo Building, the foundation’s headquarters since 1992


Opposite page The collection contains around 7,000 works, including paintings, drawings, sculptures and objects


Right Inside Son Boter, Miró’s late 18th century house used as a studio from 1959


‘I want everything that I leave behind to stay just as it is when I am gone,’ said Joan Miró. ‘Architecture itself can become a sculpture’ was Josep Lluís Sert’s response. So, established to preserve his studio and ‘everything that I leave’, in Palma de Mallorca between 1954 and 1956 Sert created a vast and impressive building for his friend and fellow Catalan. Today the Miró Foundation has three remarkable buildings that form one of the island’s most important architectural ensembles: the Sert Studio, where Miró started working in 1956; Son Boter, a late 18th century Mallorcan house bought according to Miró ‘as being a good investment, it [also] provides shelter from bothersome neighbours’ that the artist used as a second painting and sculpture studio from 1959; and the Moneo Building, the Fundació’s headquarters, designed by Rafael Moneo and opened in 1992, to provide exhibition space, a library, an auditorium, offices, a shop and cafe.


Exiled due to the Civil War, Sert, who was Dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design at the time, exchanged ideas with Miró on the design of the artist’s studio by post. During the two-year construction there was intense correspondence between them, the letters bearing witness to the


architectural ideas as they developed keeping each other abreast of the building’s progress. Tis correspondence made up for the architect’s non-presence on site, where the work was supervised by Miró’s brother-in- law, Enric Juncosa.


It was this sculpture-like architecture on Mallorca that led Aimé Maeght, Miró’s gallerist and editor since 1947, to entrust the design of the Fondation Maeght to Sert: the creation of the first private foundation dedicated to the visual arts in Europe. Created hand in hand with the Maeghts, Miró and a number of artists, who gave life to some of its main features, including the sculpture garden entrance, the Giacometti Court, buildings wrapped around patios, a bell tower for the chapel and a home studio.


The Munnings Museum, Dedham Vale, Essex


The Georgian home of Alfred Munnings, regarded as the pantomime villain by modern artists on account of the silly things he said when president of the Royal Academy, was also considered the best equestrian artist since Stubbs.


Horta Museum, Brussels


An undisputed capital of art nouveau, this was the home and studio of Victor Horta, where he was responsible for every detail, inside and out. The museum remembers a lost age and one of the leading figures of a flamboyant movement.


135 Rue Esseghem, Brussels


The family home from 1954, this is where René Magritte created half of his work, and it also became a base for Belgian surrealists.


Liebermann Villa, Berlin


Max Liebermann was Germany’s leading impressionist painter. Built in 1910, his summer house in Wannsee, beside Berlin’s largest and loveliest lake, is home to his collection.


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