Miró and the Object
October 29, 2015–January 17, 2016
Curated by William Jeffett and the Fundació Joan Miró
The Fundació Joan Miró presents Miró and the Object, the first exhibition to specifically explore the role of the object in the work of Joan Miró. Sponsored by the Fundación BBVA and curated by William Jeffett and the Fundació Joan Miró, the show presents over a hundred artworks from the Fundació Joan Miró collection and important public and private collections in Europe and America. The exhibition includes paintings, collages, assemblages, ceramics, and sculptures covering an extended period from 1916 to 1981, as well as a selection of original objects that the artist himself collected.
Miró’s creative process can be read through his relationship with objects. His fascination with them led him to collect elements of the most diverse nature. From his earliest paintings, collages and assemblages to his later bronze sculptures, the works included in Miró and the Object allows for a thorough investigation of Miro’s use of objects through the different stages of his career.
The exhibition is structured into six areas that examine the artist’s initial shift from pictorial representation of the object to its actual incorporation in the work through collage and assemblage, a change that in the late twenties was in many respects a direct challenge to accepted artistic practice.
Over the following decade, the artist gradually introduced more heterodox materials into his work. The exhibition illustrates how this tendency culminated after World War II, with Miró’s foray into ceramics and sculpture, which became an essential line of work towards the end of his career. With his second “anti-painting” period, Miró advanced his investigation on the objectual nature of painting, by cutting and stabbing the canvas to reveal the underlying support, as he did for his major retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, in 1974.
The selection includes works that have never been exhibited in Spain before, notably the collage Portrait of a dancer (1928) from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the painting The toys (1924) from the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Other remarkable works include Still life I (The stalk of wheat) and Still life II (The carbide lamp), two paintings from 1922–23 belonging to MoMA, which were last exhibited at the Fundació Miró in 1993.
The exhibition also features four assembled objects—which are being exhibited together in Barcelona for the first time—from the series that Miró produced in 1931. Of the several collages in the show, there are two significant works from 1929, one of which will join the collection along with the collage-painting from 1933, Painting, as new permanent loans on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Fundació Joan Miró. Finally, in the last section of the show, among Miró’s later works, the exhibition includes the exceptional The birds of prey swoop down on our shadows (1970), an oil painting on cowhide.
To complement the show, the Fundació Joan Miró has designed a programme of activities that includes a contemporary dance performance in the exhibition rooms and a family programme featuring an object-theatre show and related workshops.
Miró and the Object allows visitors to discover Miró as the artist who challenged painting and who contributed through his dialogue with objects to bringing about a major change in the accepted notions of art-making.
The exhibition will be on display until January 17, 2016 at the Fundació Joan Miró. In spring 2016, Miró and the Object will travel to CaixaForum Madrid.
Exhibition organised by Fundació Joan Miró
Exhibition sponsored by Fundación BBVA
Catalogue published by Fundació Joan Miró. With essays by William Jeffett, Perejaume, Joan Punyet Miró, and Didier Ottinger, Chief Curator at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Available in Catalan, Spanish and English.
