This weekend, I took a quick metro and funicular ride to the top of Montjuic—a mountaintop filled with gardens, sculptures, a castle, and the Fundació Joan Miró. The Fundació Joan Miró is a two part museum; one part is obviously filled with work by Joan Miró, and the other section is a temporary section, which currently holds the work of Alfons Borrell.
While seeing the work of Joan Miró was definitely a good experience, and obviously very entertaining, as you can see from the featured photo above, I personally connected much more with the work of Alfons Borrell. His works seemed to explore how much someone could say in a painting with having so ‘little’ on the canvas. For example, one piece might simply be a black canvas with two pink scratched lines. Yet, it was just as powerful to me as a more detailed Miró piece. Another Borrell piece might just be a single color, but diluted in different areas. Still, each of those pieces were extremely successful.
What I really appreciated about the Borrell exhibit was the way that it was curated. Individual pieces were hung in such a way that the colors in each of the paintings in each of the rooms worked together. Obviously, this occurs in any well-curated exhibit, but there seemed to be an importance of having specific pieces in specific places, so that as a whole, all of the painting’s colors in a certain room harmonized.
What made this day at the museum extra exciting was that my friend and I actually got to meet and talk to Alfons Borrell! He had actually seen my friend look closely at one of his paintings and start to smile, and was curious about what his painting made her feel or think about.
Here is a website that shows some of the paintings that are in his temporary exhibition…I was not able to take any pictures in the exhibition, so I highly recommend that you click on the link! Keep in mind the scale as well, as most of these paintings cover an entire wall!
