Joaquín Mir Trinxet

In 1905 Joaquín Mir fell from a cliff while painting at Sa Calobra, the gorge where the Pareis torrent meets the sea on the north coast of Mallorca. The fall left him with serious brain injuries, and he spent most of the next two years in the Pere Mata psychiatric institute in Reus, in southern Catalonia. He kept painting there, the asylum garden and its pavilions designed by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner.

Mir had come to Mallorca in 1899 with Santiago Rusiñol, the painter and leading figure of Catalan Modernisme, and stayed on alone, painting the coast in colours so intense that the forms almost dissolve. Earlier, in his native Barcelona, he had belonged to the Colla del Safrà, the Saffron Group, young painters including Isidre Nonell who went out to paint the poor outskirts of the city.

After Reus he settled in the hill villages behind the town, L'Aleixar and Maspujols. Terraced Village, painted around 1909 and now in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, shows Maspujols with its houses stepping up the hillside.