The anti-painting of Joan Miró is not an actual technique as it is more of a statement. He didn’t mean to violate or to deconstruct the norms and traditions of painting, but rather to remove all sacred qualities and status of the artistic work. It began with his claim:

“I want to assassinate painting.”

Miró tortured the canvas with unconventional methods: he burnt it, wounded it and perforated it in order to create a grotesque disfigurement.

By challenging the very notion of painting, Miró questioned its economic value and the interests of the art market. Thus, he used art to join the growing struggle for freedom that emerged towards the end of the Franco dictatorship.

With his statement “I want to murder painting”, Joan Miró was part of the avant-garde discourse questioning artistic practice in order to go beyond the limits of creativity. The Miró works from this era suggest a breaking away, through the contamination of painting itself using anti-artistic elements such as industrial materials and others from the recently born mass-culture.

Location: Joan Miro Foundation (Barcelona, Spain)