Antoni Miralda

Spanish artist Antoni Miralda (born 1942) found in drawing and photography a refuge from his required military service, which left him feeling physically exhausted and emotionally repressed. From this hostile wasteland would emerge the seeds of works that would distinguish him within the Parisian avant-garde of the mid-1960s. Booom is a heretofore unpublished compilation of Miralda's photographs and notebook sketches, made while at boot camp, which are at the root of his antiwar sculptures—a body of work that led the artist to become internationally celebrated. It is an essential publication for gaining a deeper understanding of Miralda's remarkable ability to transform everyday elements into powerful instruments of critique and provocation. Booom, of course, does not arrive at just any moment. It comes at a time when the world is witnessing the most severe escalation of potential armed conflict since World War II.

Since the 1970s, Catalan artist Antoni Miralda (born 1942) has created avant-garde installations, happenings and performances all over Europe and the US, most famously with his restaurant El Internacional (created with his partner, the chef Montse Guillén), which became a celebrated 1980s New York hot spot, and the FoodCulturaMuseum. Miralda has spent a large part of his career in the US, especially in the 1960s and ’70s when he traveled widely across the country and amassed a substantial oeuvre of photographs. This volume compiles these black-and-white images, recently discovered by chance in Miralda’s archives. Often comical, sometimes somber, the photographs range from shots of Easter celebrations in Brooklyn to portraits of Louisiana carnivals, scenes from Harlem, the Bronx, Kansas City, Miami, Philadelphia and elsewhere in the US, as well as photographs taken in Europe.

Fashion photography occupies an unknown place, although of great importance, in the career of Spanish artist Antoni Miralda. After settling in Paris, Miralda collaborated regularly with the legendary ELLE magazine between 1964 and 1971, often working on contemporary seasonal collections linked to the art world. Among the many spreads produced by Miralda, one stands out for the notoriety of the model who stars in it: the iconic Twiggy.
This stunning new volume highlights how influential this early body of work was, both to his own career as well as in the world of fashion photography. While most images at the time featured models in studios, Miralda took these models out into the street: uncodified and unpredictable spaces that required the photographer and his team to make quick yet complex design choices. Faced with the Grand Paris of Haussmann or the Paris of museums and imposing cathedrals, Miralda prefers the blind points of historicist urbanism; popular, unclichéd places with a great human density. No-Flash Fashion, with its contemporary design and its references to fashion magazines and archives, presents for the first time a detailed view of the undiscovered work of one of the most versatile and iconic artists of the 20th century.
Antoni Miralda (born 1942) is best known for his “food sculptures” and public performances centered on the ritual of eating. He designed the Food Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany. In 2018 he won the Velázquez Prize for Plastic Arts, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture.