Storm Clouds & Starlight: An Afternoon with Joan Miró in Barcelona

Tracing the surreal, the political, and the poetic in the shadowy halls of the Fundació Joan Miró

It was the kind of Barcelona afternoon that turns postcards into lies. Grey skies sulked over Montjuïc, the drizzle alternating between theatrical mist and outright spite. A day best suited to tea and regrets. But there we were—umbrella snapping in protest, trainers soaked, and soul equally sodden—ascending a slick hilltop path toward the Fundació Joan Miró, a modernist slab of hope perched stubbornly against the gloom.

Inside: warmth, quiet, and the mad, miraculous mind of one of Spain's most subversive sons.

Let's get this out of the way: Joan Miró (1893–1983) wasn't your average paint-splattered romantic. He didn't just doodle stars and squiggles on canvases and call it a day. His work was rebellion in technicolour, resistance disguised as play. Born in Barcelona but spiritually tethered to the craggy olive groves of Mont-roig and the revolutionary cafés of Paris, Miró crafted a language all his own—a visual Esperanto of birds, moons, and things that looked vaguely like genitalia but might also be political prisoners. Depends on the angle. Or the mood. Or the regime.

And mama mia, what a regime.

Miró came of age just as Europe was on the verge of destruction. The Spanish Civil War gutted his homeland. Franco's fascist fiesta of fear drove him into exile. He fled to Paris, then Mallorca, where he spent years in enforced quiet, painting as if his brush were a bayonet. His political leanings were fierce but nuanced—he never joined a party or waved a flag. Instead, he painted constellations. Cosmic cries for freedom. You can see them here, framed in the sun-drenched halls of the foundation he helped create.

But back to the gloom. There's something cinematic about trudging into Miró's universe on a day like that. The city's colour dial turned down to zero, only for the gallery walls to explode in every hue known to man—and several that surely aren't. Primary colours so bold they look freshly invented. A squiggle of blue that feels like the first time someone ever said ocean. Miró's art transcends language and culture, connecting us all in a shared experience of wonder and awe.

The Fundació itself is a Bauhaus-meets-Balearic dream. Designed by Miró's friend Josep Lluís Sert in the 1970s, it features clean lines and skylights, providing the perfect contrast to the wild, feverish dreams hung on its walls. As you wander through its corridors, you'll find yourself in a children's picture book penned by a political dissident with a God complex. And yet—it works.

Miró's early work is quieter, more earthbound. Oils and landscapes that whisper, not shout. But by the time he was painting The Farm (famously bought by Hemingway, who said it had "all of Spain in it"), the surrealism had begun to bubble. The later pieces—massive canvases, acidic colours, ominous symbols—feel like manifestos shouted into the void.

One particular room housed May 1968, his response to the student protests and general strikes that rattled France. It's a riot of gesture and grit: slashes of black, like barricades; violent reds, like sirens; and that stubborn Miró moon, hanging in the chaos like hope refusing to leave the room.

By then, the rain had stopped, but I stayed indoors. Outside, Montjuïc glistened in post-shower smugness. Inside, I stared into Woman, Bird, Star (Homage to Pablo Picasso) and thought about exile. About how Miró, like Picasso, like so many of his generation, was a refugee of ideals. Too principled to stay, too haunted to leave art behind. His brushstrokes were breadcrumbs leading home.

Miró once said he wanted to 'assassinate painting.' What he did instead was stage a glorious coup. He tore art down from its ivory tower and handed it a pair of scissors and a sunbeam. He let it be weird and wild and worried. He made it speak in tongues. And then—here's the genius—he made it sing. His art is a testament to resilience and triumph, inspiring us to embrace the weird, the wild, and the worried in our own lives.

The Fundació Joan Miró is more than a museum. It's a monument to defiance—a cathedral for colour in a country that once tried to snuff it out. Miró died in 1983, just as Spain was tiptoeing into democracy. He didn't live to see how fully his vision would win. But on a soggy afternoon in Barcelona, the proof was all around me. The Fundació stands as a beacon of hope and defiance, empowering us to stand up for what we believe in, even in the face of adversity.

As I left, a school group buzzed through the lobby, their bright backpacks looking like little Miró doodles in motion. One boy pointed at a sculpture of a star-topped woman and said, "She looks like she's dancing."

She did.

So did Miró.