The exhibition, which features over fifty paintings, three sculptures and a wonderful collection of collages and drawings, spans the Catalan artist's entire career.
A particular focus is the Jeux d'Enfants ballet, with Miró having designed both the sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo production in 1932. A light is also shone on some of the artist’s more radical and lesser-known works from the sixties and seventies.
“Miró: La Peinture au Défi” also examines the artist's tireless explorations of new artistic media.
Miró was born in Barcelona in 1893, but the emotional landscapes that shaped him as a person – and an artist – were principally those of Mont-roig, Paris and Majorca, and later New York and Japan. The small town of Mont-roig in the Baix Camp area of Catalonia was a counterpoint to the intellectual excitement he experienced while living with the Surrealist poets of 1920s Paris, and the thrill of discovering Abstract Expressionism in New York in the forties. Sometime later, in the midst of World War II, Miró returned from exile in France to settle in Palma de Mallorca, which became his refuge and workplace, and where his friend Josep Lluís Sert designed the studio of his dreams.
Miró’s love of landscapes, first in Mont-roig and later Majorca, played a central role in his work. His connection to the land, and his interest in everyday objects and the natural world formed the backdrop to aspects of his technical and formal research. Miró avoided academicism in his constant quest for pure, universal art that could not be assigned to any one movement. Although self-contained in his conduct and public expressions, Miró’s rebellious side and keen sensitivity to the political and social events around him showed through his art. These conflicting forces led him to create a unique and extremely personal language that makes him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. (Find out more... )
