Joan Miró and Alexander Calder exhibited together in Serralves Foundation

Around fifty pieces from the sculptor Alexander Calder and the painter Joan Miró are on display, until next year, in Serralves. In Miró’s case, the artworks that can be seen in this exhibition are 15 from the Portuguese State, kept by the Municipality of Porto and in a long-term deposit in Serralves Foundation, and also 11 works from the painter that belong to the collection of the Catalan Joan Miró Foundation.

“Alexander Calder: A Balancing Line” and “Joan Miró/Alexander Calder: Space in Motion” show the “the formal and aesthetical relationship between [Calder and Miró], that have become friends since the moment they met until Calder’s death in 1976”, explains Robert Lubar Messeri, the curator for the exhibition “Joan Miró/Alexander Calder: Space in Motion”, organised by the Serralves Foundation in collaboration with the Joan Miró Foundation.

The inauguration of the exhibitions took place this Thursday and had the presence of the mayor of Porto City Hall, Rui Moreira, accompanied by the Chairman of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee, Ana Pinho, director of the Museums and Libraries of Porto, Jorge Sobrado, among many other guests.

Exhibitions available until 2024

The encounter between Miró and Calder, that met in Paris in late 1928, represented one of the most fertile artistic friendships and sustained visual dialogues of the twentieth century and their work has frequently been paired in exhibitions, Robert Messeri said.

The other exhibition called “Alexander Calder: A Balancing Line” and commissioned by the director of Museu de Serralves, Philippe Vergne, presents some of the most important works from the sculptor that have been created during his stay in Paris. Many of those pieces are made with wire and produced at the same time as the figures of the famous “Cirque Calder”, as well as an important group of pieces from the 1940s. It is organised in partnership with the National Museum for Modern Art, Georges Pompidou Centre, in Paris.

The exhibition “Joan Miró/Alexander Calder: Space in Motion” is divided in five sections, where, for example, the series of “head-portraits” that were inspired by friends, between 1927 and 1930, in which the sculptor expanded the limits of his sculptor practice, stand out.

In the year in which the centenary of Serralves Park is celebrated, the exhibition includes a group of “Calder’s monumental” sculptures, that are on display in the gardens of Serralves throughout many locations.

The exhibition “Alexander Calder: A Balanced Line” will be on display in the House and Serralves Park until May 19th ,2024 whereas “Joan Miró/Alexander Calder: Space in Motion” will be on display until January 7th, 2024.