Please, return this text to box no. 419 available at museoreinasofia.es Picasso and Miró in the 1960s Degree Zero of Painting

Picasso and Miró’s final works offer a unique insight into the twilight of painting as the foremost medium of avant-garde experimentation. Towards the end of their careers, both artists were exploring the limits of pain- ting in very different ways. Picasso turned painting in on itself in his seriesEl pintor y la modelo (The Painter and his Model), 1963, creating unsolvable meta-artistic origami. Miró, on the other hand, got closer to the degree zero of painting in an attempt to transcend all boundaries.

elements, is using the subject matter as a metaphor for the conceptual nature of art, of the transformation of the real into the sign, as a paradox of the relationship bet- ween reality and art. A significant amount of Miró’s work over the last two decades of his life seems to lean towards strip- ping down, calmness and emptiness. The artist’s relationship with poetry and wri- ting (which strengthened in those years because of a visit to Japan where he learnt about eastern techniques of calligraphy) had a decisive influence. In these works, of which some very important examples The intention behind this space is to raise the profile of other artistic experiences that are on show, the author reaches the abso- are somewhat overlooked in a lineal discourse which, organized around successive su- lute limits of the purification of painting, perceding stages, ignores the contribution that artists of the caliber of those that we organizing poetic spaces where vibration, are focusing on made to the painting of the Sixties. This, the final work of Pablo Picasso rhythm and emotion are key. (1881-1973) and Joan Miró (1893-1983), was ignored by critics until very recently, treated as material that was derivative of their other periods. But this room recuperates Bibliography this output, focusing on how resistant it was, and how that meant its discourse could withstand the simultaneous discourse of the new generation it was questioning and Esteban, Paloma [Comisaria]. responding to. By bringing these two environments face to face, with all their similari- Picasso: las grandes series. ties and differences, we are enriching the view of this period, and of the artists involved. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Rei- It is interesting to feel the change in atmosphere between previous rooms and those of na Sofía y Aldeasa, Madrid, 2001. these two artists, which have a serenity and formal elegance so different from the ex- plosion of subjectivities and gestural violence of the previous ones. Unlike the expressi- Krauss, Rosalind; Rowell, Margit. ve, the scream, Miró and Picasso withdraw into the silence of the artist’s studio and the Joan Miró. Magnetic Fields. emptiness of painting. Both use a pictorial space without narrative, without expression, The Solomon R. Guggenheim as a metaphor for the nature of artistic work; nothingness, degree zero, as a vehicle of Foundation, New York, 1972. change. This stance from the post-Second World War avant-garde evolved from the tragic to the constructive, bringing back experiences and genres from before the con- Links flict. Rather than the pathos and unworkability of the subjective, Miró and Picasso con- tinued to move towards revolution, to achieve change, to achieve a Utopia. www.fundaciomiro-bcn.org In Picasso’s case, a number of works from El pintor y la modelo, 1963, are on show, this www.museupicasso.bcn.es being one of the most important series from the latter years of his career. The artist, www2.museopicassomalaga.org with his characteristic immediacy and irony (shown in his almost caricaturesque Rem- www.musee-picasso.fr brandt-style painter, and the odalisque-like model) and the repeated and stereotyped