Ricard Mira

What does Ricard Mira do?

To Master Joan Abelló

• 55×32×24 cm
• Iron
• 2003

Ricard Mira offers a rich, varied descriptive range of figurative monuments, statues, paintings, weathervanes, etc.

Among them, one must single out metal figures made of various materials such as the Monument to Pau Casals, silhouettes of women, skylines, portraits, sport and motorsport (especially motorcycling) scenes.

A special mention must be made of the portrait he made of the Catalan painter Joan Abelló, a cold-forged iron sculpture preserved in the Fundació Municipal Joan Abelló, Mollet del Vallès (Barcelona).

On 7 July 2014, during a ceremony at the Palau de la Generalitat, the Right Honourable President of the Government of Catalonia, Mr. Artur Mas, gave Ricard Mira a Sculptor Master Artisan diploma. The Master Artisan title is the highest distinction awarded by the Government of Catalonia to «artisans having excelled exceptionally in the exercise of their profession, with a proven career» and has a lifelong character.

Critique of art on Ricard Mira

Beautiful Woman from Jérica

• 48×25×30 cm
• Iron, copper and brass
• 2006
• Model: Horte Vivas Peiró

The expressiveness of Ricard Mira’s sculptures stems very much from his combination of fullness and emptiness, quite often making use of undulating plates that confer dynamism on his figures and suggest some elasticity in contrast with the consistency of metal itself. Thus he plays with the viewer’s perception, who, in front of three-dimensional pieces, can find volumes evoked in the lack of matter.

In perfect agreement with the gracefulness of profiles and bodies, he also occasionally plays with the light shed on metals, conferring on them warmth and interesting variations of color shades.

At the same time, this endows the sculptor’s works with the lyricism, plasticity and elegance that characterize his productions, mostly devoted to the human and animal figure of vernacular tradition.

The sinuous and polished lines, and the purity of forms, sometimes contrast with the rawness and carelessness of finishes, a certainly personal hint again pointing to the artist’s tendency to contrasts in unity.

Tania Alba
Art Historian

Critique on Horte’s Bust

Horte’s Bust

• 45×33×34 cm
• Iron
• 2010
• Model: Horte Vivas Peiró

The title is short for Hortensia, the name of a model frequently used by him and who is for him a source of creativity and inspiration.

In this work we find reflected many of the characteristics of the artist’s plasticity and expressiveness, in which the plastic representation of a space, even simply of a particular object fixed at a momentary and specific point in time, declares itself as the primordial essence of his sculptures. Ricard Mira researches and plays with “fullness” and “emptiness” as if with “day” and “night”, or yin and yang. Subtle, delicate wavy sheets convey to the viewer feelings of dynamism and movement, causing a perception of elasticity in clear contrast with the stiffness of the material used. A lively and personal spirit flows from his hands that gives us a vital, nuanced work softened by this elegant dynamism, thus producing a perfect balance in the composition’s end result.

The consequence is a balanced, mature, three-dimensional work, an object with a life of its own. It is just along these lines that we find, in my opinion, the main bases of its concept.

Josep Fèlix Bentz
Art Historian

Museums

The Goodbye

• 30×18×12 cm
• Iron
• 2003

The museums preserving some of Ricard Mira’s works are:

• Museum of the Americas, at Florida (United States): «The Goodbye»
• Museu Abelló Fundació Municipal d’Art, at Mollet del Vallès (Barcelona): «To Master Joan Abelló»
• Col·lecció-Museu Garreta-Rovira, at Mollet del Vallès (Barcelona).

Also, there are many private collections holding works by Ricard Mira, among others the following: Antoni Font, Jaume Forés “Calet”, Carme Marín, Josep Marín, Jordi Mas, Josep Masats, Amparo Pérez, Jaume Rifà.

Jaume Rifà
Local History Scholar