Joan Miró in Washington

Celebrated as one of the greatest modern artists, Joan Miró (1893–1983) developed a visual language that reflected his vision and energy in a variety of styles across many media. On view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape reveals the politically engaged side of Miró through some 120 paintings and works on paper that span his entire career.

They reflect the artist's passionate response to one of the most turbulent periods in European history that included two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, and the decades-long dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Through it all, Miró maintained a fierce devotion to his native Catalonia, a region in northern Spain.

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.

Date: until August 12.
Location: National Gallery of Art. 4th and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20565. USA.
Opening hours: from Monday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm. Sunday from 11am to 6pm.