The Second ''Consideration''

Genius Loci / Miró. Dalí

Catalonia 1915-25

Picasso is almost always in France; Miró is searching for a "manner" of his own, looking at European art but without ever forgetting the rural environment of Mont-roig or the Camp of Tarragona; and Dalí-barely out of childhood-is busy furiously and curiously experimenting with the first "-isms" and their consequences. Catalonia's cultural history branched out on its own towards the end of the 19th century, and when Picasso's father, an art teacher, chose Barcelona as the city in which to bring his academic career to a close, he had his son's future in mind. Another decision by another father, Don Salvador Dalí y Cusí, to send his son to Madrid to study at the San Fernando Academy and to lodge at the Residencia de Estudiantes, brought about a change in the cultural relationship between Catalonia and Madrid. The Catalan genius loci-in other words Catalonia's spirit, its character, its traditions and its culture-comes through in a different way in the work of Miró and in that of Dalí. In Miró, whose gaze was trained above all on France, the demands of identity and "vernacular" features are by no means at odds with modernity or with the new concepts of ar tistic vocabulary. Dalí was also looking at Italy, and not only contemporary Italy, but he wrote: "I only love the landscape of Cadaqués; I don't even look at any other landscape."

The Second ''Consideration''

Genius Loci / Miró. Dalí

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