Joan Gardy-Artigas 1938 -

JOAN GARDY ARTIGAS (b. 1938) is a living embodiment of the modernist art movement. The son of Joseph Llorens Artigas, Picasso’s and Miró’s favorite ceramicist, Artigas grew up surrounded by both the art and the artists who revolutionized twentieth-century art. Impressed into service as Miró’s assistant as a teenager, he left Spain several years later both to escape the oppressive Franco regime and to try and establish an independent artistic identity. After a period as a student at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, he became friends with the sculptor Alberto Giacometti and, opening a ceramics atelier in Paris, worked with Georges Braque and Marc Chagall. When his father became too frail to work, Miró called him back to Spain and a twenty-year partnership—broken only by Miró’s declining health in 1981—ensued. The fruits of this partnership can be seen in large ceramic murals and sculptures all over the world including ceramic murals for Harvard University, UNESCO (Paris), Fondation Maeght (St. Paul), the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, the Barcelona airport, the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the Haack Museum (Ludwigshafen), IBM Headquarters (Barcelona), and a 60-meter ceramic mural for the Palais des Expositions et des Congres de Madrid, He and Miró also collaborated on a 22-meter ceramic sculpture for a fountain in Barcelona. In addition to his work with Miró, he has made a number of monumental public sculptures including a monumental work in Zurich, a large fountain for Vitry-sur-Seine, La Porta Blanca, an 8.5-meter cement and bronze sculpture for Chamonix, Forma de dona for Plateau d’Assy, Porta per una ciutat, an 11-meter sculpture outside Barcelona, La porta de Franca, a 15-meter sculpture on the French side of the tunnel at Mont-Blanc, Terra I foc, a 15-meter work for "la Caixa," Barcelona, and works for Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, London, the Fonda Europa de Granollers, Barcelona, and the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró in Palma de Mallorca, and sculpture gardens in London and Tokyo. He also participated in several architectural projects with the firm of Skidmore Owings, and Merrill, making ceramic floors and fountains in Atlanta, Chicago, Cairo and Egypt. Artigas began exhibiting his own smaller ceramic and bronze sculptures in France and Spain during the mid-1960s and began making lithographs and etchings in 1968. He has had a number of commissions for large public sculptures (in bronze, ceramics, and concrete) in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. and has had shows in many European, Japanese, and American galleries and museums, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the He has been a visiting artist at the UW—Madison, and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He serves on the board of the Fondation Miro in Barcelona and is Director of the Fundació Tallers Joseph Llorens Artigas in Gallifa, Spain, which he created in 1989 in memory of his father and to provide a place where artists from all parts of the world come together to work for a period of up to six months.