"Mori el Merma" – aus dem Bild herausgetretene Ubu-Figuren Mirós. Der Triumph des Künstlers über den Franquismus

Abstract

Summary: If Picasso’s Guernica (1937) marks the beginning of the dark period of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, the theater play Mori el Merma by Joan Miró and the Putxinel∙lis Claca troupe stands for the end of fascism in that country. The performance of this play coincides with the proclamation of the democratic constitution in 1978. Together with Picasso, and with the same humanistic spirit, Miró had created his monumental fresco El Segador for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris World Fair (1937). If this work has since disappeared, the battle of the painter for human rights did not come to an end with it. The iconographic model of both the Segador and Merma was Ubu roi by the French artist Alfred Jarry (1873–1907). With this dramatic (and pictorial) work he anticipated the archetype of the “small” bourgeois who finds himself in a position of absolute politic power. Jarry’s monstrous marionette inspired many 20th c. artists, and Miró used this character in many drawings and lithographies as well. The performance of this genuinely ubuesque creation in Barcelona’s Liceu theater, with the Spanish royal family in the audience, represents the unforgettable highlight of Mirós continuous fight against the dictatorship. [Keywords: Miró, theatre, Apollinaire, Jarry, Spanish Civil war, fascism].