Miro’s Chicago: The Iconic Public Sculpture That Almost Wasn’t

On April 20, 1981, on artist Joan Miró’s eighty-eighth birthday, a crowd gathered in Brunswick Plaza in Chicago’s Loop. Mayor Jayne M. Byrne had planned an elaborate celebration for the unveiling ceremony of the new public sculpture, Miro’s Chicago, but it was so windy and blustery that day that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had to cancel its accompanying performances. After a brief dedication speech, Mayor Byrne pulled the cord but the 50-ft sailcloth obscuring the sculpture “would not fall for a good several minutes, as the mayor pulled good-naturedly in vain.” [1]

When the curtain eventually fell, it revealed a thirty-six-foot-tall abstract figure of a woman with outstretched arms, a simplified face, and a crown-like fork atop her head. Made of bronze, concrete, and colorful ceramic tile accents, and standing on a twenty-two-inch stone clad base, Miro’s Chicago embodies the Catalan artist’s distinctive style, simultaneously whimsical and otherworldly, like an ancient fertility figure or something drawn from a childlike dream. While Miró’s advanced age prevented his attendance at the unveiling, his longtime friend and architect Josep Lluís Sert spoke on behalf of the artist, saying Miró “sends you part of his own self and his personal homage to Chicago.” [2]

Now a pillar of downtown Chicago’s unparalleled collection of modernist public art, Miro’s Chicago almost didn’t get to take her rightful place in Chicago’s heart. First called The Sun, The Moon, and One Star, and sometimes known as Miss Chicago—it is unclear who ultimately named her Miro’s Chicago, but it wasn’t the artist—the story of this fascinating sculpture began nearly twenty years before. [3]

In the early 1960s, SOM Senior Partner William Hartmann had successfully convinced Pablo Picasso to design a new public sculpture for the plaza in front of the new Chicago Civic Center (now the Richard J. Daley Center). Hartmann’s colleague, SOM Partner and architect Bruce Graham happened to be working on a new project, the Brunswick Building, facing the plaza that would be the home for the new Picasso. It was Graham’s idea to ask Joan Miró if he would be interested in creating a public artwork for Brunswick Plaza, within view of the planned Picasso.

Bruce Graham was born in Colombia, and grew up in Peru and Puerto Rico; Spanish was his first language, and this undoubtedly helped him develop a relationship with Miró. He also knew that Miró and Picasso, both already well-known as masters of twentieth-century art, had not only a longtime friendship but also a friendly rivalry, which Graham used to his advantage when he approached Miró about a commissioned sculpture for Chicago.

Joan Miró, who was born in Barcelona in 1893, first met Pablo Picasso in Paris in 1920. At that time, Picasso’s career had already taken off. Picasso was born in Southern Spain and was over a decade older than Miró, but he had lived in Barcelona as a teen and considered the city his true home; the artists had much in common. The pair began a decades-long friendship as well as a playful rivalry, which Graham attributed to Miró’s Catalan heritage: “Catalans are much more competitive. But they got along very well. It was kind of like, ‘I can do one, you can do one.’” [4]

In fact, Picasso had decided to waive any artist fee for his sculpture for Chicago, and, as Graham tells it, “It was very easy for me to talk to Miró and say, ‘You know, Picasso is doing one across the street for nothing,’” and Miró agreed to do the same. [5] According to William Hartmann, Miró was kept abreast about the development of Picasso’s sculpture and designed his own work specifically with this relationship in mind. [6]

Miró, along with his longtime collaborator, Catalán ceramicist Josep Llorens Artigas and his son, Joan Gardy Artigas, also came to visit Chicago during this time. Graham showed them around. In addition to visiting the sculpture’s future site, Graham “took them to jazz places at night and they just loved it. They would get up and shout “Olé!” [7] In 1963, Miró provided a plaster maquette of the proposed sculpture. Neither Miró nor Picasso had worked at such a large scale on a public sculpture before. But while Picasso’s sculpture moved ahead as planned, the Brunswick Corporation put the brakes on Miro’s Chicago, likely due to cost.

Unveiled in 1967, Picasso’s giant, unorthodox Cor-Ten steel sculpture was controversial at first. But The Picasso (also not named by the artist) grew to become a beloved icon of Chicago, ushering in a new era of public art in the Loop: the next decade brought the installation of works by other world-class modern artists, including Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Isamu Noguchi, and Claus Oldenburg. But Miró’s sculpture remained unrealized.

Many years passed, with Graham keeping the Miró maquette in his office. In the late 1970s, Graham realized that if there was any chance of the sculpture’s revival, it would need to be soon, as Miró was already in his mid-eighties. In 1978, Graham put together an internal team at SOM to begin exploring what it would take to construct the sculpture. This prep work would prove invaluable when Stanley M. Freehling, a wealthy stockbroker and Chicago’s most prodigious arts philanthropist, saw an opportunity and shared it with Graham. Freehling knew that Jayne Byrne, who had recently been elected as Mayor of Chicago, had a keen interest in fostering art in the city. Graham and Freehling had the perfect project to pitch to the new mayor: the Miró sculpture. They took the proposal to Mayor Byrne in fall 1980, who agreed to allocate $250,000 of city funds, approximately half of the expected cost of the fabrication and installation of Miro’s Chicago, provided Freehling and Graham could find the funding to cover the rest. [8]

Coincidentally, Bruce Graham had recently become the Board Chair of the newly formed SOM Foundation. In its nascent few years, while developing a plan for its philanthropic giving, the Foundation also made its first donations to a few select projects. Under Graham’s guidance, the SOM Foundation contributed $60,000 to Miro’s Chicago. The remaining funds were quickly raised from a variety of foundations, private donors, and corporations. [9] A nonprofit, Art In The Center, Inc., was created to act as custodian of the sculpture, independent of whomever owned the former Brunswick Building then or in the future. [10]

Miró tasked Joan Gardy Artigas, the son of Josep Llorens Artigas, as his proxy to oversee the creation of the sculpture. Father and son were master ceramists and sculptors who had worked with Miró for decades—and both had accompanied the artist on his trip to Chicago nearly two decades earlier. (Graham and the younger Artigas would go on to work together, with Artigas providing tilework, on several Graham-designed buildings around the world. [11] When Artigas started a foundation in honor of his father in 1989, he asked Graham to design the building to house its artist studios, north of Barcelona.) [12]

A team from SOM had already been working since 1978 on the underlying engineering necessary to bring Miró’s vision to scale. Using what was then cutting-edge computer technology, the artist’s 36-inch-tall maquette was first 3D modeled with early CAD-software, using photographs from numerous vantage points that were coordinated mathematically, creating dynamic 360-views.

The team then put the maquette into a CAT-scan to take 120 cross-sectional X-rays, which were subsequently stacked. The results were used to design the underlying steel structure and support system, enabling the team to rigorously reproduce Miró’s original vision while ensuring that the sculpture was structurally sound.

Along with coordination of the onsite fabrication, this structural design work was led by SOM Associate Partners Stan Korista (Structural Engineer), Ray Griskelis (Project Manager), Fred Lo (Design Architect), and Doug Stoker (Director of Computer Services), and SOM Associate James Zamorski (Technical Coordinator).

The colorful ceramic tiles and the bronze section combining the sculpture’s head, neck, and crown were made in Barcelona, by Artigas and Fundició Parellada respectively, and carefully shipped to Chicago. Onsite, under the direction of the SOM team, the underlying steel structure was attached to the bronze head, and then gunite, a type of sprayable concrete, was applied over wire mesh and lathe and subsequently covered in plaster by workers from McNulty Brothers, who donated their time to the project. [14] [15] Artigas came to Chicago not only to oversee the entire project on behalf of Miró, but also to model the mesh by hand, and lay the tile himself.

Despite less-than-ideal conditions for the public unveiling, Miro’s Chicago continues to dazzle decades later. The original 36-inch-tall maquette is now part of the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago. In addition, Chicagoans visiting Barcelona may notice a familiar face on the top of Montjuïc. In 1968, after the sculpture’s fate in Chicago seemed doomed, Miró offered the design to his hometown. There were talks of building a towering 100-foot version atop Parc Cervantes, and while that was never realized, a twelve-foot bronze and painted cement model of the sculpture, fabricated in 1968, is now in the collection of Fundació Joan Miró, perched on an overlook in front of the museum’s building (which is itself designed by Miró’s friend Josep Lluís Sert), with a spectacular view of the city behind her. [16]

Today, back in Chicago, while the Picasso is hard to miss, Miró’s sculpture across Daley Plaza is unfortunately more tucked away. Nestled between the Chicago Temple Building and the Brunswick Building (now the George W. Dunne Cook County Administration Building), the Miró has gotten more hemmed in after a bus shelter was built directly in front of her in 2015. [17] Despite this, Miro’s Chicago remains a crown jewel in Chicago’s world-class collection of modernist public art.

Notes

[1] William Currie, “Miro’s lady takes a place of honor,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1981.

[2] Currie, “Miro’s lady takes a place of honor.”

[3] “Oral History of Bruce Graham,” interviewed by Betty J. Blum, compiled under the auspice of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project, the Art Institute of Chicago, 1998, 96. Available online courtesy the Ryerson and Burnham Art and Archive at the Art Institute of Chicago.

[4] “Oral History of Bruce Graham,” 94.

[5] “Oral History of Bruce Graham,” 96.

[6] “Oral History of William Hartmann,” interviewed by Betty Blum, compiled under the auspice of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project, the Art Institute of Chicago, 1991 (2003 revised edition), 154. Available online courtesy the Ryerson and Burnham Art and Archive at the Art Institute of Chicago.

[7] “Oral History of Bruce Graham,” 97.

[8] “The Story of Miro’s Chicago,” City of Chicago press release, April 6, 1981.

[9] A total of approximately $300,000 were raised, in addition to the $250,000 provided by the Mayor’s office.

[10] “Oral History of William Hartmann,” 155.

[11] “Oral History of Bruce Graham,” 195.

[12] “Finding Bruce Graham’s Hispanic Heritage in His Work,” SOM, September 28, 2022.

[13] “Finding Bruce Graham’s Hispanic Heritage in His Work,” SOM, September 28, 2022.

[14] “Miro Sculpture: Structural Description,” SOM Archives.

[15] “Oral History of Bruce Graham,” 96.

[16] Collection record for Joan Miró, Soleil, lune et une étoile, 1968, Fundació Joan Miró, accessed March 22, 2025. https://www.fmirobcn.org/en/colection/catalog-works/8013/p-model-for-em-moon-sun-and-one-star-em-p

[17] John Greenfield, “CDOT Promises the Miró-Obscuring BRT Station Won’t Be an Art Faux-Pas,” StreetsBlog Chicago, October 30, 2015.