The exhibition titled Joan Miró and Joan Baixas. Mori el Merma in Alicante,
organized by the MACA and the Consortium of Museums of the Generalitat, would not have been
possible without the loan of works from the Provincial Council of Alicante, Fundació Miró, Barcelona;
Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, Palma; Es Baluard, Palma; Catalan Roca Archive, COAC, College
of Architects of Catalonia and Municipal Archive of Alicante.
History of a Representation
Mori el Merma was a theatrical spectacle by the Teatre de la Claca company directed by
Joan Baixas and Teresa Calafell with sets, masks and large puppets or dolls
designed and painted by Joan Miró. For several months, Miró collaborated in the design of
the characters constructed in fabric and foam rubber by the group and in March 1977, in
La Claca's own workshop and as another member of the group, he proceeded to paint and
decorate them. After months of rehearsals, the work premiered first in Palma de Mallorca, at the
Teatro Principal and later, at the Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona on June 7, 1978.
In the first two years, from 1978 to 1980, it was performed within the Festival
d'Automme at the Pompidou Center in Paris, at the Riverside Studios in London, at the
Fondation Maeght in Saint Paul de Vence or at the Sala Olympia in Madrid.
The importance of Mori el Merma in Joan Miró's production is capital: it is not just another
of his incursions into the theatrical scene, an artistic aspect for which he felt genuine
passion. It is the representation of the character of Ubu that Miró associates with General
Franco. Joan Miró conceived of the dictator as the embodiment of darkness, the iron hand of
Spain's darkest period, the sinister force that sowed salt in the territories
where freedom was to grow. The character of Ubu that Miró develops plastically
through a series of drawings and three portfolios of lithographs, takes the stage with the work
of Mori el Merma which encompasses his political ideology transversally bathed in surrealism.
The history of the puppets of Mori el Merma in Alicante is complicated but fascinating.
When in 1980, La Claca dismantled the work to undertake a new stage, Miró agreed to the sale of the initial sets, part of which were deposited in the
Miró Foundation in Barcelona and another part, thanks to the efforts of the Alicante artist
Eusebio Sempere, were acquired by the Provincial Council of Alicante with the purpose of
completing the 20th Century Art Collection. Meanwhile, the sets were exhibited
in 1980 at the Museo de la Asegurada, not without friction between the artist and the City Council
as reported by the press. After fourteen months of exhibition they were dismantled and
stored in wicker baskets that were removed in 1988 by the Provincial Council, where they
were preserved from then on. They were never exhibited again.
This exhibition that we present has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of all the
institutions involved, the willingness to highlight this fascinating story about the
puppets, masks and sets by Joan Miró and the Teatro La Claca group, and to
recover for everyone, one more of the efforts made by Eusebio Sempere for
the benefit of his fellow citizens. The puppets, masks and scenic material have been
restored by the Valencian Institute for Conservation and Restoration of the Generalitat. Joan Miró, Ubu and the Theater
Painter of poets as Joan Brossa defined him, Miró maintained a close relationship with
literature, especially with the poetic creation of his time, with the poets and writers
linked to the avant-garde who attracted him through their desire for experimentation and their
rebellious and nonconformist character. From this perspective, one must understand his affinity with the
Surrealists with whom he identified very early, upon his arrival in Paris in the 1920s. Surrealism opened the doors to an imaginary world that he made his own and gave him a certain sense
of rebellion that he would never abandon. In that search for transgression, Miró felt
genuine fascination for the work of Alfred Jarry and his famous theatrical work Ubu roi. The
character of Ubu, recreated a thousand times by twentieth-century artists, is the personification of
the tyranny of power, vulgar and bloody, that embodies corruption and despotism. "Now
everyone sees clearly that what Alfred Jarry imagined was actually Franco and his followers. This is the reason
why Ubu fascinated me during the Franco years and
it is the reason why I have drawn it so many times." And so it was, the subject interested him and he
worked on it again and again. The plastic result: drawings, sculptures and three books with
lithographs published in 1966, 1971 and 1975 (Ubu roi, Ubu aux Baléares and L'Enfance d'Ubu) that were direct stimulus for the argument and scenic elements of the theatrical work Mori el Merma, a spectacle that in 1978 closed the cycle of Ubu in Joan Miró's work. Miró's passion for the stage is a subject demonstrated in exhibitions and
studies but not as well known to the general public. For the theatrical world he designed
costumes, characters, posters and dance spectacles. He was fascinated by the theme of
representation and believed in the great theater of the world where everything came to life. "Theater is
made and nothing remains, that is fascinating. The work of art can disappear, that doesn't
matter but it must have left its seeds in the earth." In 1975, Joan Miró
proposed to the Teatre La Claca group a collaboration beyond painting a couple of
puppets or large-headed figures; he wanted to participate in the design and staging of a theatrical work, Mori el Merma (the title would come later) in what ultimately became the
last great project of his life. Miró wanted to get involved attracted by theatrical language in
a complete spectacle and felt from the beginning a passionate interest in this collaborative work. Fundamentally for three reasons. First because the plastic intervention
that was requested of him was about his own work and he approached it as a challenge of
plastic experimentation. On the theatrical level, Miró participated in the idea of a poetic theater, not necessarily linked to words and with strong popular roots
manifested in festivals and carnivals. And finally, as a fundamental reason, Miró
collaborated thus, at such a delicate moment as 1976-1977, in the struggle against intolerance and abuses of power, to exorcise fears, to finish off the aggressors and their
followers who had made prisoners of the ideas and expression of an entire people and to
expel rage and bitterness. Miró managed, thanks to the collaboration and enthusiasm of the young people of La Claca, to stage
a plastic and political obsession. At his age, already near ninety years old, the
artist remained curious and in search of new discoveries; constant proof
of his youth. It was his last great project, with full awareness and with the greatest
of satisfactions.
The Exhibition
1.- Joan Miró / Alfred Jarry
Joan Miró always had a very special interest in the work of Alfred Jarry. He felt
genuine fascination for the writings and personality of the French artist and for his famous
theatrical work Ubu roi to which he would dedicate three bibliophile books and the scenography of the work
that concerns us, Mori el Merma. The text of Ubu roi considered the vanguard of the
Dada movement has been successfully performed throughout the twentieth century by numerous
theatrical directors who have often adapted it to the present day. Miró knew Jarry's text in the early 1920s since he bought a copy of the
book published in 1921 and read and reread it, annotating in the margins and drawing on the
blank pages inspired by the character of Ubu and in clippings that he interspersed between the pages of the
copy preserved in the Miró Foundation in Barcelona.
His interest in the text manifests itself for the first time in 1937 when he participates in the
creation of the program for Ubu enchaîné presented at the Comédie des Champs
Elysées with sets by Max Ernst. Miró participated along with Breton, Eluard, Magritte,
Picasso, Man Ray, Tanguy and others in the publication of a notebook of drawings and
poetic texts dedicated to Jarry and the world of Ubu. Miró presents a grotesque Portrait of
Mère Ubu, a deformed tuber in which lyrical elements coexist with scatological and crude motifs. Over the years, the fascination with Jarry's character acquired
an extraordinary dimension through the trilogy of books dedicated to Ubu and published
by Tériade.
2.- Artist Editions.
Inspired by Alfred Jarry's grotesque farce, Joan Miró designs three bibliophile books
published by Tériade in Paris in 1966, 1971 and 1975 that illustrate the artist's obsession with
the character of Ubu. The first with original text by Alfred Jarry is Ubu roi. The second and
third are entirely the fruit of Miró's invention, both the situations and the drawings and
the text. We could almost speak of two theatrical works by Miró in the line of absurdist theater that he also illustrates graphically and they are Ubu aux Baléares and L'Enfance d'Ubu. Miró
places Jarry's protagonist in the Balearic Islands and with an ingenious counterpoint of images and
popular Majorcan and Catalan phrases of humorous and somewhat crude tone,
collected by the artist to compose the text, it seems he wants to opt for irony and
joking rather than drama.
UBU ROI
Alfred Jarry, Ubu roi, Original Lithographs by Joan Miró Paris Tériade Editor, 1966.
Printer: Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, for the text and typography. Mourlot, Paris, for the
lithographs. Publisher: Tériade Editeur, Paris.
Ubu roi contains 13 lithographs (a frontispiece and twelve interior plates drawn in
violent interlaced arabesques that tend to fill the entire space) colored with
very varied inks, of strange broken tonalities (pale yellows and greens, blues
tending toward lilac, mauves…) of predominantly strident intensity. The great dynamism
of the scenes comes from the unstoppable undulation of all the strokes, from the tendency toward
continuous interlinking of the various figures and, above all, from the composition based on
the respective positions of the characters, always in a strongly
clashing, almost paroxysmal mutual relationship: of exhibition, of admonition, of repulsion, of
brutal aggression…
Each of the thirteen lithographs has been treated as if it were a small theater, as a space
where the different volumes have been placed, in this case the characters of the work,
more than as a drawing. The grotesque and rounded forms evoke the tyrant and all
his entourage. The violent and garish colors give a folkloric and unsettling tone, rather than
harmonious, to each of the scenes.
Valenciana.