JOHN MIRO: THE EXPERIENCE
OF SEEING
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
February 13, 2014 -
May 26, 2014
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
PRESENTS LATE CAREER
PAINTINGS AND
SCULPTURES BY JOAN MIRÓ
MIRO: THE EXPERIENCE
OF SEEING
February 13, 2014 –
May 26, 2014
The first in-depth
exhibition of Miró’s late work in the United States, with special attention
paid to the artist’s captivating sculptures. The exhibition opens on February
13, 2014 and draws from the rich collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, the leading museum of modern and contemporary art in
Spain.
One of the great
innovators of 20th-century art in Europe, Miró
was briefly aligned with the Surrealists in the late 1920s in Paris and went on
to create a striking pictorial and sculptural universe throughout his
six-decade career.
This unique
exhibition brings together some 50 paintings and sculptures made in the period
between 1963 and 1981 that testify to the artist’s playful ingenuity and inventiveness,
adding entirely new chapters to his artistic legacy. Although Miró had
experimented with assemblage in earlier periods, it is only in this later
period that he builds sculptures from found objects that are then cast in
bronze. On view at SAM through May 26, 2014, visitors will experience a rare
glimpse of the artist’s later work.
Following its
presentation in Seattle, Miró: The Experience of Seeing, will travel to the Nasher
Museum of Art at Duke University in North Carolina from September 11, 2014
through February 22, 2015 and the Denver Art Museum March 22 through June 28,
2015.
“Our collaboration
with the Museo Reina Sofía, one of Europe’s greatest museums of modern art,
allows us to share the work of one of the world’s most important artists with
Northwest audiences for the very first time,” said Kimerly Rorschach, Illsley
Ball Nordstrom Director of SAM.
Born in Barcelona in
1893, Miró was from Catalonia, the region in the northeast corner of Spain. In
his political views as well as his artistic endeavors, Miró was drawn to
his contemporary and fellow Spaniard Pablo Picasso. From 1920 when he makes his
first visit to Paris Miró spent time in the capital where he connected with the
literary and artistic avant-garde and was drawn into the orbit of the
Surrealists.
During this time,
Miró began to develop an abstract and expressive visual vocabulary that set the
stage for his subsequent artistic career. “For me, the essential things are the
artistic and poetic occurrences, the associations of forms and ideas.”
Miró considered
painting a dynamic spark: “It must dazzle like the beauty of a woman or a poem
and fertilize the imagination.” After years of political turnoil, Miró’s move
to a new studio on the island of Mallorca, Spain, allowed him to bring together
and reassess many paintings previously in storage. It triggered a fruitful new
phase in the artist’s career.
He began to explore
new painterly territory, often working in distinctly different styles, and he
began to make sculpture. Already in 1941, in the midst of war, the artist
developed ideas for working in sculpture: “It is in sculpture that I will
create a truly phantasmagoric world of living monsters.” He drew inspiration
from found objects, building structures from salvaged wood, discarded hardware
or household implements and then casting them in bronze. The dialogue between
painting and sculpture is crucial at this time with resonances across media and
across decades. It is this push and pull between sculptural and painterly form
and articulations of space that this exhibition will explore.
Miró: The Experience
of Seeing is organized by
the Seattle Art Museum and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. This
exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts
and the Humanities. The Seattle presentation of this exhibition is made
possible with critical funding provided by SAM’s Fund for Special Exhibitions.
Corporate Sponsor is Christie’s.
You may visit Joan Miro: Life & Art news which consist of more paintings, textile, ceramics, sculptures and different information from my blog archive to click below link.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/10/john-miro-life-art.html
HEAD, BIRD, 1977 ( DETAIL )
HEAD, BIRD, 1977
Indian Ink,
Lithographic Ink Tempera
And Wax on Paper -
39 3/8 X 27 3/8 in.
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
HEAD, BIRD, 1977 ( DETAIL )
A DIALOG BETWEEN PAINTING AND SCULPTURE
Miro’s paintings and sculptures have a shared repertoire of signs
and subjects; ample female figures are a link to prehistoric representations of
women as symbols of fertility and of earthly existence; the bird, perched or in
flight, is a sign of imagination and poetic capability, while cosmic landscapes
and constellations introduce ideas of universal fluidity and beauty.
Miro had created a number of assemblage objects that expanded on
painterly ideas in the context of Surrealism, but it was only during and after
World War II that he rigorously explored new ideas and processes. In the early
1940’s, he made notes for future sculptures and envisioned a ‘’ phantasmagoric
World of living monsters. ‘’ He outlined a process that would take found
objects as a starting point – integrating and expanding on them just as he had
used stains on paper and imperfections in canvases. Casting the finished
assemblage in bronze would maket the individual objects disappear and emphasize
the whole. Miro began to realize these ideas after moving into his new studio
in 1956.
http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibitions/miro
‘’ I try to apply
colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. ‘’
MIRÓ
WOMAN VI 1969 ( DETAIL )
WOMAN VI 1969
Oil on Canvas 28 ¾ *
36 ¼
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
WOMAN VI 1969 ( DETAIL )
FIGURE & BIRD 1968 ( DETAIL )
FIGURE & BIRD 1968 ( DETAIL )
FIGURE & BIRD
1968
Joan Miró, Spanish, 1893-1983,
Lost-wax
Casting, Patinated Bronze, 40 9/16 x 23 5/8 x 8 7/16 in.,
Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró /
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
FIGURE & BIRD 1968 ( DETAIL )
FIGURES, BIRDS,
CONSTELLATIONS 1976,
Joan Miró, Spanish,
1893-1983,
Oil on Canvas, 51 x
76 9/16 in.,
Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
SPATIAL CONCEPTS
The paintings with white backrounds achieve maximum intensity with
a minimum of means. They are animated by light touches of color or minimal
fluid brushstrokes that become signs in expansive spaces. Miro thought of his
paintings in terms of immobility, defining not only an infinite movement of
space but a landscape in which the human being is implied.
Immobility makes me think of vast spaces that contain movements
that do not stop, movements that have no end. As ( The philosopher Immanuel )
Kant said, ‘ It is a sudden irruption ( eruption ) of the infinite into
the finite. ‘ A pebble, which is a finite and immobile object, suggests not
only movement to me but movement that has no end.
What I look for, in fact, is an immobile movement, something that
would be the equivalent of what we call the eloquence of silence or what Saint
John of the Cross called, I believe, soundless music.
MIRO 1959
http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibitions/miro
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM USA
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM USA
FIGURE, 1969,
Lost –Wax Casting,
Patinated Bronze, 55 7/8 X 16 3/4 X 16 5/16 in.
Base: 16 9/16 X 12
13/16 X 12 3/16 IN.
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
BIRD & WOMAN ( DETAIL )
BIRD & WOMAN
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
BIRD & WOMAN ( DETAIL )
YOUNG WOMAN DREAMING
OF EVASION, 1969
Lost - Wax Casting,
Patinated Bronze - 39 X 8 7/8 X 6 7/8 in.
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
FIGURE, BIRDS 1974
Joan Miró, Spanish,
1893-1983,
Oil on Canvas, 45
11/16 x 34 5/8 in.,
Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
HEAD & BIRD 1981 - 83 ( DETAIL )
HEAD & BIRD 1981
- 83
Joan Miró, Spanish,
1893-1983,
Lost-wax Casting,
Patinated Bronze, 25 9/16 x 16 9/16 x 7 5/16 in.,
Base: 2 3/4 x
9 13/16 x 7 5/16 in.,
Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró /
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
HEAD & BIRD 1981 - 83 ( DETAIL )
WOMEN & BIRD IN THE NIGHT 1974 ( DETAIL )
WOMEN & BIRD IN
THE NIGHT 1974
Joan Miró, Spanish,
1893-1983,
Oil, Acrylic, and
Charcoal Pencil on Canvas, 102 3/8 x 72 13/16 in.,
Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró /
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
YOUNG WOMAN 1967 ( DETAIL )
YOUNG WOMAN 1967
Joan Miró, Spanish,
1893- 1983,
Lost-wax Casting,
Patinated Bronze, 13 x 14 3/16 x 2 3/4 in.,
Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró /
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
YOUNG WOMAN 1967 ( DETAIL )
HEAD IN THE NIGHT
1968
Joan Miró, Spanish,
1893-1983,
Lost-wax
Casting, Patinated Bronze, 28 1/8 x 14 3/16 x 12 3/16 in.,
base: 1 9/16 x
14 3/16 x 12 3/16 in.,
Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró /
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
WOMAN AT THE SQUARE
IN A CEMETERY, 1981
Lost - Wax Casting,
Patinated Bronze - 23 13/16 X 23 1/16 X 20 1/16 in.
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
THE WARRIOR KING 1981
Lost – Wax Casting
Patinated Bronze 48 5/8 * 24 3/16*15 9/16
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
WOMAN ENTRANCED BY
THE ESCAPE OF SHOOTING STARS, 1969,
Acrylic on Canvas -
76 3/4 X 51 3/16 IN.
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
WOMAN WITH BEAUTIFUL
BREASTS 1969
Joan Miró, Spanish,
1893-1983,
Lost-wax
Casting, Patinated Bronze, 18 1/2 x 5 1/8 x 3 15/16 in.,
Base: 2 3/8 x 3
15/16 x 3 1/8 in.,
Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró /
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
MIRO’S ‘’ LIVING MONSTERS ‘’
The painting in ochre tones, like Bird Woman II, which were painted
during the summer of 1977, are full of gestural energy despite the artist’s
advanced age. In these paintings, Miro created potent hybrid figures that range
from the phantasmagoric to the grotecque. The ochre, black and reddish tones
capture a dramatic intensity and the figurative paintings have a tactile
quality similar to his sculptures from this period.
Miro remarked that his painting ‘’ can be considered humorous ‘’
but that he thought of his inclination as ‘’ tragic, rather than lighthearted.
‘’
http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibitions/miro
LATE SCULPTURES
The sculptures in this gallery were made in 1981, just two years
before Miro’s death. Two intriguing landscapes and a cluster of quietly
insistent figures are contrasted here with several drawings from the late
1970’s, which are full of expressive energy.
Within this group of works, there is a compelling interplay between
the individual figures – male and female – which conveys both fragility and
strength. Their silent gestures resonate in the surrounding space. For the
sculptures with an allusion to lanscape, Miro created an actual framework,
establishing a scale and stage for the figures and objects that populate these
spaces.
Miro drew comparisons between silence and noise as interdependent –
in the midst of silence, he noted, ‘’ the smallest sound is magnified. ‘’ His
work process was similary dialectic as he described searching for the noise
hidden in silence, the movement in immobility, life in inanimate things, and
the infinite in the finite.
http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibitions/miro
JOHN MIRO: THE EXPERIENCE OF SEEING
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
February 13, 2014 - May 26, 2014
JOHN MIRO AT HOME IN
HIS STUDIO IN PALMA DE MALLORCA C. 1977
Photo © Christian Simonpietri / Sygma / Corbis
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /
Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014
WOMAN, BIRD &
STAR ( HOMAGE TO PICASSO ) 1966 -
1973
Joan Miró, Spanish,
1893-1983,
Oil on Canvas, 96
7/16 x 66 15/16 in.,
Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. © Successió Miró /
Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2014
