Joan Miró

“I have thought a lot about the question of titles. I must confess that I find any for works that take off from an arbitrary starting point and end with something real.. ..[Miro allowed Pierre Matisse to make titles, based on the] real things.. ..[if they do] not evoke some tendency or other, something I want to avoid completely [very probably Miro meant here: the Surrealists ]. [advising Pierre Matisse; who showed then several modern European painters in New York].”

“We see ourselves confronted with pure abstraction. Small problems and highly obscure subjects are, if you will, always grand in intention, and the layman would casually and quite undisparagingly trample on them if they were to serve as carpet motifs.”

“..something as sensational as [a] heavy weight prize fight.. ..a rain of swings, uppercuts, and straight right and lefts to the stomach and everywhere throughout the entire event – a round lasting about twenty minutes. [remark on a ballet Miro planned to, c. 1930]”

“..wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly. Courage consists of staying at home, close to nature, which could not care less about our disasters. Each grain of dust contains the soul of something marvellous. [Miró admonished art-critic w:Georges Duthuit ]”

“Down with the Mediterranean!”

“Let's transplant the primitive soul to the ultramodern New York, inject his soul with the noise of the subway, of the 'el', and may his brain become a long street of buildings 224 stories high. [Barcelona - Dada, 1917]”