Step into Artist Joan Miró’s Mallorca Studio

Spain’s famed surrealist artist, Joan Miró, moved from his native city of Barcelona to his workspace studio in the Cala Major district of Palma de Mallorca in 1954, where he experienced his most productive artistic period until his death there, in 1983. The Fundació Miró Mallorca exhibits more than 6000 works donated by the artist and consists of four zones: The Sert Building, Finca Son Boter, The Moneo Building and the Sculpture Gardens. 

The Sert Building, claimed as 'the studio of Miro's dreams' was named after his close friend, the architect Josep Lluís Sert, who designed the minimalist Pavilion of the Spanish Republic for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, Miró’s art studio is a white, concrete structure, quite unlike the traditional clay or stone houses of Mallorca, or the wider Mediterranean. Not only that, but all of the art studio’s façades have red, blue, or yellow painted door and window surfaces that tie in with the time’s Modernist aesthetics, influenced by Le Corbusier and infused with an almost Mondrian-esque colour scheme. Inside artist Miró’s Mallorcan studio, the L-shaped floorplan is laid out on two levels and covered by a vaulted roof. Very much human-sized, it’s here that Mirò worked on his pieces and stored them, sometimes for years, in order to gain distance and rework them.

Within the adjacent 18th-century Son Boter, built in the traditional Mallorcan house style, Its walls feature original charcoal graffiti by the artist. A place used to work on very large paintings and sketches for sculptures, and today visitors can step within the painter's scene of unfinished paintings, his drawings, his oils, his watercolours, paint brushes and sponges, his newspaper clippings and his collection of found objects such as stones, postcards, butterflies, shells and folkloric artefacts. Finish the tour within the landscaped gardens filled with objects, installations and cultures. The Moneo Building houses exhibitions of the Foundation's contemporary collection as well as a library and auditorium.  

Mirò’s artwork, in which the recurring symbols stars, women and birds can be found, lives on around the world in museums, galleries and collector’s homes. But mostly, it lives on here in the artist’s Mallorca studio, where the paint-splattered floors give the impression that Miró’s spirit is still very much present.

Sert Studio

© Miquel Julià

Son Boter Studio

© Pep Escoda

© Rubén G. Perdomo

The Foundation Headquarters

© Pep Escoda

Moneo's Building

© Rubén G. Perdomo