Jean Marie del Moral
The silences of the studio
It was 46 years ago that Jean Marie del Moral (France, 1952) met the painter Joan Miró in Barcelona. On entering the great artist’s studio, he realised that he wanted to be a professional photographer. But not just any photographer. He wanted to portray artists in their workspaces, in that place where it all happens. Over these days, a selection of the images taken in the nearly 300 studios he has photographed to date is on display at Aba Art gallery under the title ‘The Silences of the Studio’.
text Angie Ramón
photography Jean Marie del Moral
“Joan Miró was a silent man, but he was also generous and polite. In his studio there was organisation and cleanliness. Every object was in its place. I was fascinated not only by the artworks, but also by the space,” recalls Jean Marie del Moral, who first entered the great artist’s studio when he was 26 years old. Actually, it was the first time that Del Moral had ever entered any painter’s studio.
Jean Marie came to photography by chance. He had already been dabbling in the craft for some years, especially during the period of time he lived between Canada and New York, where he discovered American abstract expressionists such as Robert Motherwell. In reality he dreamed of being the next Henri Cartier-Bresson. But after that visit to Joan Miró’s studio, everything changed.
A painter’s space is a place where silence prevails, and at the same time a place where chaos can co-exist with harmony. “It is the mental ABC of artists,” he says.
When Jean Marie enters a studio, he always respects the nature of the place, he never creates any disturbance, the click of his camera is discreet. In more than forty years in the profession, he has seen nearly 300 studios of artists from all over the world. “Just as one word leads to another, one studio leads to another. One of the things I discovered, and which made the most impression on me, was the fact that there were connections between all those spaces. Then I realised that artists are looking for the same thing, with similar references, but on different paths.”
Jean Marie has always been more interested in the environment in which the artist moves than in the artist himself. [...]
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