As many would agree, there is a trinity of art in Barcelona, who are Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali representing the Barcelona artists. They all spent their formative years in Barcelona and all three had extensive effect on the art scene of the 20th century and beyond.They all have a museum in Barcelona that a part of their collections is exhibited. Among the three, Pablo Picasso is maybe the most well known artist of all. There has already been an article of BarcelonaHi! regarding Picasso (below). Therefore, I´d like to emphasize more on the two other members of the trinity, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali.
Joan Miro (1893-1983) was a painter, sculptor and ceramist born in Barcelona. Miro was among the first artists to develop automatic drawing as a way to undo previous established techniques in painting, and thus, with Andre Masson, represented the beginning of Surrealism as an art movement. However, Miro chose not to become an official member of the Surrealists in order to be free to experiment with other artistic styles without compromising his position within the group. He pursued his own interests in the art world, ranging from automatic drawing and surrealism, to expressionism and Color Field painting.
Miró confessed to creating one of his most famous works, Harlequin´s Carnival, under similar circumstances:
"How did I think up my drawings and 
my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..."
my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..."
The pieces of Joan Miro can be seen in Barcelona at the Joan Miro Foundation (info), which is a museum of modern art honoring Joan Miro and located in Montjuic, Barcelona. The building was completed by the architect Josep Lluis Sert who conceived an open space with big terraces and interior courtyards.
"The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me." - Joan Miró, 1958
Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was a Spanish Surrealist painter who has great influence on the art world. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire includes film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.
Late in his career, Dalí did not confine himself to painting, but experimented with many unusual or novel media and processes: he made bulletist works and was among the first artists to employ holography in an artistic manner. Several of his works incorporate optical illusions.
Dalí employed extensive symbolism in his work. For instance, the hallmark "soft watches" that first appear in The Persistence of Memory suggest Einstein's theory that time is relative and not fixed. The idea for clocks functioning symbolically in this way came to Dalí when he was staring at a runny piece of Camembert Cheese on a hot day in August. The egg is another common Dalíesque image. He connects the egg to the prenatal and intrauterine, thus using it to symbolize hope and love; it appears in The Great Masturbator and The Metamorphosis of Narcissus.
Dali Museum (info) is an hour and a half away from Barcelona in Figueres (image below).
´´I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly.´´ - Salvador Dali, in Dawn Ades, Dali and Surrealism.
All 3 artists have 3 points in common: their worldwide influence on the 20th century art, abstract thinking and long lives of 90 years on average. To me, this shows that artists tend to live long here with their minds over the clouds thinking of other dimensions. I wonder if they used to get together and make fun of the world they see, but I wouldn´t think that Picasso would be so happy to be compared, Dali would be too crazy to set standards and Miro was too surrealist to be compared.
