CaixaForum Barcelona moves Miró's tapestry to the foyer after its restoration

CaixaForum Barcelona has moved the tapestry that Joan Miró and the textile artist Josep Royo created for "la Caixa" to the foyer, following the successful completion of the live restoration project of the work, which began two months ago.

Entitled Miró's Star, the project, presented at the end of March, offered the public the chance to see this work by Miró for the first time in 38 years and, at the same time, to understand its creation process by witnessing its restoration live. Over the last two months, visitors have been able to learn about the history of the Miró star that forms the institution's emblem and observe the restoration of the tapestry's fibres to understand how they are affected by environmental conditions.

From this Wednesday until the end of the year, the public will be able to continue to see the piece in a glass case installed in the foyer of CaixaForum Barcelona.

At the end of the 1970s, the then Caja de Pensiones para la Vejez y de Ahorros de Cataluña y Baleares took on the need to unify and improve the institution's image. It was then that the "la Caixa" brand was born and also when it was decided to commission the American agency Landor to renew the image. At the end of 1979 it was decided to use the work of an artist and Joan Miró (1893-1983) was chosen.

The corporate commission became the monumental work Tapestry, which was shown for the first time in November 1980 in the exhibition Joan Miró. Obra gráfica, at the Casa Macaya Cultural Centre in Barcelona. The tapestry's grand opening was the inauguration of the Science Museum (now CosmoCaixa) on 2 June 1981. It was exhibited at the entrance to the centre until 1984, when it was moved to the foyer of the new headquarters of the institution, on Avinguda Diagonal. There it has hung uninterruptedly for the last 38 years, where only the workers and visitors have been able to appreciate it all this time.

The "la Caixa" Foundation Tapestry is 5 metres long by 2 metres high and weighs 200 kilos, and its main materials are wool, cotton and hemp. It is one of the seven large tapestries that Miró made during the 1970s in one of his last expressive adventures, in collaboration with the textile craftsman Josep Royo.

The tapestry that Joan Miró and Josep Royo created for "la Caixa" in 1980 is a large-format work that forms part of Miró's mature period, during which he simplified his visual language and explored the technical and expressive exploration of matter, such as, in this case, fabric. Miró worked with the textile artist between 1969 and 1983, the year of the painter's death.

The tapestry has a markedly iconic character and is a formal refinement of the artist's unmistakable style. Empty spaces and figurative compositions in which the different elements associated with the cosmos, nature and man are positioned and relate to each other to plastically transcribe the values of existence. The colour black allowed him to construct forms and to emphasise expressiveness through the contrasts offered by the pigments of the material: yellow, blue and red.