STEPPING INTO MIRO’S UNIVERSE
The Fundació Joan Miró and the Fundación Abertis open Miró Universe in India, featuring a selection of works by the artist, viewable by appointment only. THE Catalan, Spanish, painter Joan Miró, (Born in Barcelona 1893) gained his recognition despite the initial omission of his name from the list of well-known Surrealists acknowledged by writer French poet André Breton in 1924.
As one stands before his painting, Femme dans la nuit (Woman at Night, 1978), at the Spanish Embassy in Delhi it becomes apparent why this painter rose to the heights he did, for Miró’s work defied categorization and his solo journey as a Spanish artist whose strong lines and vibrant colours conveyed his awe for subjects that were universal yet unique in one go.
The night, the constellations, the figure of the woman―all seen as a symbolic representation of concepts like fertility, reproduction and sexuality―and the form of the bird were turned forever into expressions of a universe of creativity and renewal.
Brought from the holdings of the Fundació Joan Miró, this painting and other works like 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), is part of a small but significant collection of Miró’s work that is touring globally since 2019.
Besides the paintings, there is a unique sculpture Monsieur, Madame (Sir, Madam) from 1969. The work is a highly abstract piece that captures the man as a rectangular box-like structure with an eye and mouth scrolled in lines across the piece while the woman has been conceived as a sensuously rendered egg. What is also striking about the work is that even though it is quite naturalistic looking, everything is made in bronze and is actually quite heavy in weight. This adds another layer to the piece since the ponderosity contradicts its lightweight appearance.
Marko Daniel the director of Fundació Joan Miró tells us that the artist took as his references from 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. “A form is never something abstract; it always signifies something. It is always a man, a bird or something else,” said the maestro in an interview with James Johnson Sweeney.
The exhibition was attended by José María Ridao, Ambassador of Spain in India; Sara Puig, President of Fundació Joan Miró; and Elena Salgado, President of Abertis Foundation.
“Miró’s work is historical and yet timeless. The exhibition will give visitors a unique opportunity to discover an essential aspect of the artist via his exceptional graphic work. We look forward to this initiative to further foster and facilitate stronger cultural ties between the people of India and Spain via the language of art,” said José María Ridao, The Ambassador of Spain in India.
What was notable about their reaction to Miro’s was that they wanted to stand before his work insilence, the chatter and bonhomie quietened down and there was deep contemplation of the artist’s work and the photographs capturing him in his studio.
The photographs by Joaquim Gomis (Barcelona, 1902-1991) captures him working and at his personal library and of the collection of objects he kept in his studio.
Miró does command that kind of quiet, especially when the forms unwind before your very eyes.Upon closer engagement the woman in Femme dans la nuit appears in all her sensuous gorgeousness, her core exposed in a way that is both erotic and venerable. Similarly, when one contemplates Characters and Birds with a Dog, we get a glimpse into the reference to the influence of American Pop Culture that Miró makes.
“He was never directly influenced by Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein but in this painting, he especially made a stylistic comment on the movement the way he treated the rendering of the dog,” says Daniel. One can especially see the reference in the almost comic-like expression of the canine, but quite naturally it has Miró’s approach to minimal, abstract form.
In the work Personnages et oiseaux dans un paysage nocturne (Characters and Birds in a Nocturnal Landscape) the reference to political scenario in Spain at the time when he made it, in 1978, is something that perhaps only a local can read into because otherwise one is distracted by the reference to the moon and the bird in flight.
Miró is known as a painter, poet, sculptor, ceramist and so much more. He was born to a family of craftsmen, and he began engaging with the arts at the early age of 8. He joined the School of Fine Arts of Llotja, then the institute in Barcelona where he discovered the creations of the past artists from which he drew his early inspiration. Miró initially went to business school as well as art school. He began his working career when he was a teenager as a clerk. In 1911, Miro overcame a serious battle with typhoid illness, and at about the same time he abandoned the business world completely to devote his entire life to painting.
Miró has had his fair share of fame having been featured at the 1954 Venice Biennale, where he received the grand prize for graphic work, and in 1958 he created a ceramic wall for the UNESCO building in Paris. In 1974, he was commissioned to create a tapestry for New York’s World Trade Centre, but the work was lost during the 9/11 attacks. One of his last public works was ‘Woman and Bird’, a grand public sculpture for the city of Barcelona, completed a year before his death in 1983.
To get a viewing of the work that has been brought down by the Fundació Joan Miró call the Embassy of Spain in New Delhi, India (embassypages.com).
Text by Georgina Maddox
Images Courtesy: Georgina Maddox and The Fundació Joan Miró
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