- Dates
- —
- Curated by
- Maria Lluïsa Borràs
In Memory of Joan Prats
The Fundació Joan Miró is planning an exhibition in tribute to Joan Prats, one of Miró’s friends and the man who, among many other initiatives, launched the creation of this centre dedicated to Miró’s work and contemporary art.
Born in Barcelona in 1891, Joan Prats was Miró’s neighbour and their families had always known each other. A friendship developed between the two when they were very young, when they were drawing in the Llotja and the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc.
Joan Miró went his own way as an artist, while Joan Prats continued with the family business: a hat shop in Calle Ferran, which later moved to Rambla de Catalunya. But his work did not prevent him from pursuing his artistic inclinations.
He was interested and enthusiastic about avant-garde art, especially in the fields of the plastic arts and music. His enthusiasm led him to form relationships and make friends with Catalan and foreign artists, architects, musicians and poets. Apart from Joan Miró, he was friends with Alexander Calder, John Cage, J. V. Foix, Joan Brossa, Antoni Tàpies, Roland Penrose, Josep Lluís Sert and many others.
But he was not merely a spectator, for he conceived and launched all manner of activities (from ADLAN in the 1930s to Club 49 in the 1940s and Música Oberta in the 1960s), to which he devoted all the energy that was required for them to flourish.
Joan Prats was the man who brought the artists of his generation, both the few who had remained in Catalonia and those who had gone into exile, into contact with the artists of the new generation, especially those who formed the Dau al Set group, in the harsh, dry years after the war. He made it possible for young artists to be exposed to international avant-garde art and ensured that the cultural desert that was Barcelona had a window open to what was happening in the rest of the world.
