The waves from Joan Punyet Miró’s Manila exhibit

On a night where the waters of Manila Bay mirrored the open skies, both bathe in azure dusk and cloudy dreams, art enthusiasts and the forever curious marched and sashayed toward León Gallery International to eagerly witness the unveiling of Punyet L’Azur: A Homage to Mallarmé, a striking exhibit by Barcelona-born artist Joan Punyet Miró. It was an evening which blurred boundaries: between sea and sky, poetry and painting, legacy and individual voice.

For the uninitiated, Joan Punyet Miró is not merely the grandson of Joan Miró, the celebrated Catalan abstractionist who dominated the world stage of visual art with Picasso, Dalí, and Duchamp. He is a formidable force in his own right.

An erstwhile sculptor, poet, musician, and even a performance artist, Punyet Miró now focuses solely on painting. But not with brushes or palettes. His medium: his entire body. The color: always blue.

Punyet L’Azur, created entirely in Makati City, is a collection of 10 intense, deeply textural obras painted using nothing but bare hands. He does not sit or stand before a canvas; he bends, kneels, crawls, lies down, and even embraces, allowing the full range of inner emotion to guide the rhythm and shape of each magical stroke. And all in shades of blue. No other color dares to appear.

Viewers inched around the gallery with a quiet intensity. Some studied the works up close, reading the movement of the artist’s fingers across the canvas. Others stood back, absorbing the bold scale, admiring the rich densities and layers of textures of blue, which spoke in rippling and rolling waves. Each rhapsody in blue, raw and radiant, carried the depth of the ocean and the vastness of the sky.

And for these reasons — and many, many more — Punyet L’Azur became one of the most talked-about events in Manila’s cultural calendar. Guests attended to witness an act of immersion — the marriage of art and movement.

The setting could not have been more apt: On Philippine waters, so close to the artist’s beloved Mediterranean. It felt as though Mallorca and Manila had momentarily merged, the seas narrating stories between them.

As the night progressed, guests lingered, introductions sparked, conversations flowed, and memories forged. Allow me to share images from an endearing unforgettable evening, of a revered global artist with his own blue tide to Manila, and of those who gladly gathered to receive it.

¡Enhorabuena, Joan Punyet Miró!