From May, 13, to July, 22, the project shows four paintings and one sculpture by Joan Miró, as well as photographs by Joaquim Gomis, a friend of the artist and first president of the Fundació Joan Miró.
This initiative is in line with the mission of the Fundació Joan Miró to disseminate the artist’s work internationally, conveying its representational value through a concise, careful selection of paintings and sculpture from his late period.
Miró Universe is to be presented for the first time in India. Between 2019 and 2021, the Spanish embassies in Rome, Berlin, Dublin, Brussels and Paris hosted Miró Universe, as well as Cultural Centre of Spain in Mexico, thanks to collaboration between the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Abertis and its foundation, and the Fundació Joan Miró.
Through its foundation, Abertis works with major cultural institutions in order to promote culture and support the public authorities in the countries where it works.
Barcelona, 13 May 2022.
Joan Miró saw art as an intrinsic part of life, with magical attributes that had to be sought. To achieve this goal he had no hesitation in transgressing the academic conventions of painting. Like other artists linked to the world of surrealism, he sought inspiration in the most basic artistic forms, formally simple yet loaded with mystical connotations.
Taking as his references prehistoric art, the mediaeval masters and traditional culture, Miró wanted to go beyond the figurative representation of reality and steadily simplified his forms until only the essential remained. This gave rise a language of signs of his own, developed in the 1920s in Montroig del Camp (Tarragona) before finally crystallising in the early 1940s in a form he never abandoned. In Miró’s work, night, the constellations, the figure of the woman―seen as a symbolic representation of concepts like fertility, reproduction and sexuality―and the bird were turned forever into expressions of a universe of creativity and renewal.
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"A form is never something abstract; it always signifies something. It is always a man, a bird or something else. Joan Miró interviewed by James Johnson Sweeney"
The Miró Universe project immerses us in Joan Miró’s uniquely personal creative process and carries us into the mind and method of one of the most important artists of the 20th century. The exhibition explores the artist’s language of signs through a concise, careful selection of paintings and sculpture from his late period, from the holdings of the Fundació Joan Miró. This selection includes the 1978 paintings Femme dans la nuit (Woman at Night), Femme (Woman), Personnages et oiseaux avec un chien (Characters and Birds with a Dog) and Personnages et oiseaux dans un paysage nocturne (Characters and Birds in a Nocturnal Landscape), which, as well as featuring the artist’s language of signs, show another of the crucial features of his universe; the use of bright colours. In the words of Dolors Rodríguez Roig, curator of the project and author of the text of the publication accompanying the exhibition, “The pure colours respond to Miró’s intention to bring his work as close as possible to people, as well as being a nod towards pop art. They also served to emphasise his language and the symbolism of his representations, whatever artistic medium he used.” The selection is completed by the sculpture Monsieur, Madame (Sir, Madam) from 1969, which according to Rodríguez Roig exemplifies how Miró “changed the traditional perception of sculpture with his visual and poetic devices.”
Miró Universe also features photographs of the artist, of his personal library and of the collection of objects he kept in his studio. They were taken by Joaquim Gomis (Barcelona, 1902-1991), artistic backer and great friend of Joan Miró, who photographed the artist’s work and his creative surround- ings in the course of his career. Gomis was the first president of the board of the Fundació Joan Miró, which, at the wish of his heirs, manages and disseminates his photographic archive, kept in the Catalan National Archive.
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The Miró Universe project is presented for the first time to audiences in India. Between 2019 and 2021, the Spanish embassies in Rome, Berlin, Dublin, Brussels and Paris hosted Miró Universe, as well as the Cultural Centre of Spain in Mexico, thanks to collaboration between the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Abertis and its foundation, and the Fundació Joan Miró.
About the Fundació Joan Miró
The Fundació Joan Miró was set up by the artist himself, opening its doors to the public in 1975. It has a unique collection of Joan Miró’s work, his personal library and an archive with all his preliminary sketches, making it a landmark centre for research, dissemination and promotion of the artist’s work and legacy.
Since its opening as the first museum in Barcelona devoted to modern and contemporary art, the Fundació Joan Miró has shared the artist’s work and his legacy with the world. With the support of public and private institutions, it has promoted and run international projects and numerous temporary exhibitions. It has also backed Espai 13, one of the first venues devoted to emerging artists and curators, and an active educational space concentrating on promoting creativity and a better understanding of modern and contemporary artistic practices.
About Abertis
Abertis, an international leader in road infrastructure management, is strongly committed to pro- moting culture. In recent year, Abertis has worked to disseminate art in the regions where it works, bringing the work of great Spanish artists like Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Diego Veláz- quez and Antoni Gaudí to countries like France, Italy, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
Selection of images for the press
This material is to be used exclusively to publicise this project in the media. All copyright is retained by the author or their legal representative. © Successió Miró 2022
Images available here
12 July 2023
This summer, the public will be able to visit the wholly renewed Miró Universe touring exhibition at the Instituto Cervantes in Athens from 13 to 27July.
4 May 2023
Abertis, through its foundation and subsidiaries in the United States ofAmerica, has helped to take this project to the country in order to promoteSpanish culture and to raise awareness of this selection of works in one of the regions where it has a presence.
