Joan Miró. The Ladder of Escape

The Joan Miró Foundation, (Barcelona, Spain) presents Joan Miró. The Ladder of Escape, the most comprehensive exhibition of Joan Miró's work to be seen in Spain in the last twenty years. The selection is a revision of a period of nearly sixty years. It testifies to Miró's sensibility and his reaction to the events that marked the history of the twentieth century.

Featuring over 170 works, including paintings, sculptures and works on paper, drawn from public and private collections around the world, the exhibition has been organised jointly by Tate Modern, London, and the Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, and sponsored by the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Ajuntament de Barcelona and the Fundación BBVA.

The first rooms explore the links between Miró and his native Catalonia, especially the land around Mont-roig and his family farmhouse, and also the turning point in his career brought about by his stay in Paris and the creative liberation of Surrealism. This is the moment when he painted The Farm, 1921-22, which belonged to Miró's friend Ernest Hemingway, and the masterful series Head of a Catalan Peasant, 1924-25.

In the middle section, the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War is reflected in the artist's new pictorial language. The tensions that led to the conflict provoked Miró’s most explicit demonstrations of protest in works such as the series Savage Paintings, 1934-36, and Still Life with Old Shoe, 1937.

While in exile in Paris, Miró received two commissions from the Spanish Republican Government: the stamp Aidez l'Espagne, and the mural painting The Reaper (Catalan Peasant in Revolt), 1937, for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition, where it was shown next to Picasso's Guernica. The outbreak of the Second World War provoked more intimate reactions such as the famous Constellations series, realised from 1940 to 1941, and the more disturbing Barcelona Series, 1944, Miró's plastic comment on the Civil War.

The final section examines the last years of Franco's dictatorship, when the monumental paintings of great contemplative impact are contrasted with Miró's awareness of the disturbing power of more violent pictorial means. During the Franco regime, Miró worked in a kind of internal exile in Spain, while his reputation was consolidated abroad.

Joan Miró (Barcelona 1893-Palma de Mallorca 1983) was one of the most significant artists of his time. He developed a Surrealist language of symbols that suggest a feeling of freedom and energy through his use of brilliant colour and his fantastic imaginary. Often seen as the precursor of Abstract Expressionism, his work is admired for its serene and colourist spirit.


Date: until March 18.
Location:  Fundación Joan Miró. Parc de Montjuïc s/n 08038 Barcelona. Spain.
Horario: de martes a sábado de 10.00 a 19.00 horas (de octubre a junio).