Picasso, Miró, Calder | Amitiés & Résonances

One of the most fundamental moments of friendship and resonance between these men was certainly when they exhibited together in the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. Calder’s Fontaine de Mercure, Miró’s Le Faucheur and Picasso’s famous Guernica were emblematic works, marking their dedication in denouncing Franco’s violence and the horrors of war in Spain.

Fascinated by fantasy, the bestial, dreams, childhood, the circus, the heavens, femininity, the sun… Picasso, Miró and Calder were destined to meet. Their works approach common subjects, developing above all a visual dialogue. They radically renewed the way we perceive art, exploring both figuration and abstraction. When their works are compared, the same impressions emerge, whether in painting or sculpture: an innate ability to master time, space and emptiness. Their creativity and versatility lead them to use intertwined, unbroken lines to create forms and creatures in a playful, childlike way.

Great dreamers, each of these three artists had their own way of reacting and responding to the unstable and chaotic environment being forged in Europe. If Calder’s optimistic vision is counterbalanced by Miró’s darker one, Picasso finds himself in between, swinging from one side to the other. The latter sees himself in the Catalan artist saying of Miró that “we live in the same world”, without losing his mischievous, playful eye. On two opposing emotional spectrums, the communion between Miró and Calder is incontestable. Their resonance was so obvious that Calder’s mobiles were described in 1936 by the New York Times as “living abstractions of Miro”.