BARCELONA.- “Create an album with beautiful photographs of objects that I have found and embellish it with a pochoir or a coloured lithograph, with a poetic text or poem, or even a poem of my own...” With this entry in one of his notebooks from the 1940s, Joan Miró makes reference to one of the projects he would like to pursue. In a sense, The Miró Eye may be seen as the fulfilment of this wish. In his text, Joan Punyet Miró recalls the key moments in the life and work of his grandfather.

In 1978, the photographer Jean Marie del Moral (Montoire, France, 1952) entered the studio of a painter for the first time. That painter was Joan Miró. Working as a special correspondent for L’Humanité, he discovered the studio that the architect Josep Lluís Sert had designed for the Catalan artist. “It was completely silent. Only a few fragments of birdsong could be heard, in defiance of the heat outside, a joyful murmur which did not disturb the peacefulness of the place. I photographed utensils, half-finished canvases, objects that the painter had come across on his walks, had bought at a market stall or had simply been sent by a friend. Each one of them had found the place where it belonged in the white studio.”

The light, the unfinished works, the traditional furniture combined with glass cabinets with all kinds of objects collected by Miró on his walks and travels made a powerful and life-changing visual impact on the photographer. From that moment on, he never tired of photographing painters and sculptors, capturing their portraits, gestures, stages of work and, above all, providing an insight into their minds through his photographs of their studios and the objects inside them.

In the course of 2014, Jean Marie del Moral photographed each and every object that had caught the interest of Joan Miró and which he had kept, fascinated by its magnetic, singular, poetic qualities. Fantastical, surprising objects that the artist had found in the natural world or in popular art, and which form part of his creative environment.

The Miró Eye has been published by La Fábrica in collaboration with the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, Successió Miró and Fundació Joan Miró. The presentation of the book has been programmed to coincide with the exhibition Miró and the Object, currently showing at the Fundació until 17 January 2016. The show, sponsored by Fundación BBVA and curated by William Jeffett, is the first exhibition to specifically explore the presence of the object in the work of Joan Miró.