BARCELONA.- Antoni Vila Casas, president of the Fundació Vila Casas, and Sara Puig, president of the Fundació Joan Miró, signed the agreement at an event held today in the rooms of the Joan Miró Collection of the Fundació Joan Miró. Thanks to the collaboration between both institutions, from 2020 to 2030 the Fundació Joan Miró will receive 100,000 euros a year from the Fundació Vila Casas for the conservation of the Joan Miró Collection. Thus, the Fundació Vila Casas becomes a Major Partner of the Fundació Joan Miró, and its president, Antoni Vila Casas, a member of the emeritus Fundació Joan Miró board of trustees.

During the act of signing the agreement, Antoni Vila Casas praised Joan Miró as “the greatest Catalan painter of the last hundred years, the number one artist in the country”, and that this agreement is a gesture of “necessary protection” of the Fundació Joan Miró’s collection. For her part, Sara Puig expressed her deep gratitude for the complicity and generosity art promoter Antoni Vila Casas has shown with Joan Miró’s legacy. Marko Daniel, director of the Fundació Joan Miró, advanced some of the conservation projects that could be expedited thanks to this agreement, such as the restoration of the archive of sketches and drawings on paper and of the artist's personal library collection, among others.

The works of art that make up the Joan Miró Collection come from the donation made by the artist at the time of opening the Foundation to the public in 1975. Over the years, various generous donations have been made and added, including those by Miró’s wife Pilar Juncosa, his friend Joan Prats and different members of the Miró family, as well as pieces from other public and private collections that continue to enrich a living, diverse and complete collection.

The collection is currently made up of 217 paintings, 178 sculptures, 2 objects, 4 ceramic pieces, 9 tapestries, around 8,000 preparatory sketches of virtually all of his pieces, and the almost complete collection of the artist's graphic and lithographic work. The Foundation also preserves the artist's personal library, thanks to the Miró family’s archive. Ultimately, a unique collection that offers multiple ways of investigating Joan Miró’s artistic career, and one that is essential to the study, research and dissemination of Miro’s work.

Part of the collection is exhibited in the rooms that Joan Miró and Josep Lluís Sert designed together in Montjuïc. These spaces represent the friendship and dialogue that connected the artist and the architect, and were expanded in 1988 by Jaume Freixa. Their approach enhances the unique dialogue between art, architecture and landscape that characterises the Fundació Joan Miró.

The Fundació Vila Casas was founded in 1986 by pharmaceutical entrepreneur Antoni Vila Casas to reinforce health research. Then, from 1998, the basis of his artistic project was established: to collect, preserve and disseminate contemporary Catalan art from the period between 1930 and 2030. Tradition, culture and language are the axes of Catalan identity, and the essence and raison d'être of the institution. It currently owns four exhibition spaces—the Can Framis Museum and the Espais Volart in Barcelona and the Palau Solterra and Can Mario museums in Torroella de Montgrí and Palafrugell respectively—which are all part of Catalonia's architectural legacy. In this way, the Fundació Vila Casas becomes a platform for the exhibition of the permanent part of its collection, as well as for the celebration of temporary exhibitions by the artists who feature in it. As for its work in the social health field, the Foundation develops research projects in order to establish a channel of dialogue between health professionals, society and the media.