Fundacio Joan Miro - The exhibits, 4

Fundacio Joan Miro - The exhibits, 4

As always I am including the introduction from the first post. If you do not want to read it again, scroll down to the first picture.

We really enjoyed the time we spent in this wonderful museum. Even though it's a museum dedicated to the work of Joan Miro, there are a lot of artworks by other artists whose work has similarities with Miro's. An interesting way of presenting art, and one that I enjoyed enormously as it gave me an opportunity to find out about artists I did not know, or to see paintings I love, once again.

Joan Miro i Ferra, 1893-1983, a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist. His work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism. He was interested in the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike. His difficult-to-classify works also had a manifestation of Catalan pride.  In numerous interviews Miro expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an 'assassination of painting' in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

He combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life. He worked extensively in lithography and produced numerous murals, tapestries and sculptures for public spaces.

Though often referred to as a Surrealist, Miro considered his art to be free of any 'ism'. He experimented throughout his career with different media - painting, pastel, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, collage, muralism and tapestry - and unconventional materials as a way of making work that expressed the contemporary moment without relying on realism.

Joan Miro, Hands Flying Off Toward the Constellations, 1974

Joan Miro, Josep Royo, Tapestry of the Fundacio, 1979

Joan Miro, Model of the World Trade Center Tapestry (1974), 1972

Joan Miro, Sobreteixim with Eight Umbrellas, 1973

looking closer

Alexander Calder, Mercury Fountain, 1937

The fountain consists of a static part through which mercury flows, and a mobile part that the same element sets in motion. Calder wanted to pay homage to the people of Almaden, a town where 60% of the world's mercury was then mined, and which had been severely punished by Franco's troops. Given the toxicity of mercury the sculpture is isolated in a space with an independent air conditioning system.

For the 1937 Paris Universal Exhibition, Alexander Calder created Mercury Fountain, for the Spanish Pavilion, designed by the architects josef Lluis Sert and Luis Lacasa. Among other works displayed in the Pavilion were Picasso's Guernica, Miro's The Reaper. 

Joan Miro, Figure, Bird in the Night II, 1972

Joan Miro, Figure, Bird in the Night III, 1972

Dorothea Tanning, Everything is Illusion, Maybe, 1975

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitoled, 1985

Robert Motherwell, Green Label, 1982

Sam Francis, Untitled, 1985

Fundacio Joan Miro - The exhibits, 3

Fundacio Joan Miro - The exhibits, 3

As always I am including the introduction from the first post. If you do not want to read it again, scroll down to the second picture after this.

We really enjoyed the time we spent in this wonderful museum. Even though it's a museum dedicated to the work of Joan Miro, many of the paintings are by another artist whose work has similarities with Miro's. An interesting way of presenting art, and one that I enjoyed enormously as it gave me an opportunity to find out about artists I did not know, or to see paintings I love once again. 

Joan Miro i Ferra, 1893-1983, a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist. His work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism. He was interested in the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike. His difficult-to-classify works also had a manifestation of Catalan pride.  In numerous interviews Miro expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society. He declared an 'assassination of painting' in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

He combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life. He worked extensively in lithography and produced numerous murals, tapestries and sculptures for public spaces.

Though often referred to as a Surrealist, Miro considered his art to be free of any 'ism'. He experimented throughout his career with different media - painting, pastel, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, collage, muralism and tapestry - and unconventional materials as a way of making work that expressed the contemporary moment without relying on realism.

In this section, some of the most iconic artists of the 1950s are to be found. Combined with a tendency for a grand scale, the paintings of this period often enveloped the viewer by filling the visual field. Jackson Poollock was recognised as setting the pace. Elaine de Kooning wrote of this trend in 1949, as 'flying lines... spattered on in intense, unmixed colours to create wiry, sculptural constructions'. 

Jackson Pollock, Eyes in the Heart, 1946

Lee Krasner, Untitled [Little Image Painting], 1947-48

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1945-46

Elaine de Kooning, Untitled, 1950

Joan Miro, The Red Sun, 1948

Alfonso Ossorio, Number 14-1953, 1953

Michael Corinne West, Dagger of Light, 1951

Grace Hartigan, Six Square, 1951

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1952-53

Jackson Pollock, Number 14, 1951





Lee Krasner, The Seasons, 1957.

One of my favourite paintings of all time. Although faced with extraordinary challenges, Lee Krasner made The Seasons in a burst of activity in 1957. She had been in Paris the previous summer when she received news that Jackson Pollock had died in a car crash. In mourning, Krasner helped mount the Pollock memorial show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and resumed her own painting in his now vacant studio. From that 'time of life and death', as she called it, this painting remains astonishing, with the physical effort of the bodily gesture matched by sweeping, productive forms. When included in Krasner's solo show in 1958, one reviewer recognised that 'the artist is directing her compositions, not just submitting to her materials'.

Franz Kline, Four Square, 1956

Robet Motherwell, Totemic Figure, 1958

Joan Miro, May 1968

By means of handprints and an explosive energy, May 1968 expressed Miro's alignment with the student protestors of that year. He also experimented further with pouring and working with the canvas flat on the floor.

Sam Francis, Blue, 1958

Sarah Grillo, Unfair, 1963

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Harvard Mural sketch), 1962

Joan Miro, The First Spark of Day II, 1966

Helen Frankenthaler, Canyon, 1965

Joan Miro, Self-Portrait, 1937-60


 

Fundacio Joan Miro - The exhibits, 2

Fundacio Joan Miro - The exhibits, 2

As always I am including the introduction from the first post. If you do not want to read it again, scroll down to the second picture after this.

We really enjoyed the time we spent in this wonderful museum. Even though it's a museum dedicated to the work of Joan Miro, many of the artworks exhibited are by another artist whose work has similarities with Miro's. An interesting way of presenting art, and one that I enjoyed enormously as it gave me an opportunity to find out about artists I did not know, or to see paintings I love once again.

Joan Miro i Ferra, 1893-1983, a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist. His work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism. He was interested in the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike. His difficult-to-classify works also had a manifestation of Catalan pride.  In numerous interviews Miro expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an 'assassination of painting' in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

He combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life. He worked extensively in lithography and produced numerous murals, tapestries and sculptures for public spaces.

Though often referred to as a Surrealist, Miro considered his art to be free of any 'ism'. He experimented throughout his career with different media - painting, pastel, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, collage, muralism and tapestry - and unconventional materials as a way of making work that expressed the contemporary moment without relying on realism.

Louise Bourgeois, Untited, 1940s

Bourgeois created these totemic Personages as 'a tangible way of re-creating a missed past'.

Joan Miro, His Majesty the King,

These may fruitfully be compared to Bourgeois' Totemic Personages

Herbert Ferber, The Sun, the Moon and the Stars, 1950s

Roberto Matta, Psychological Morphology, 1939

Peter Miller, Ceremonial Objects, 1940

Salvador Dali, The Spectre of Sex-Appeal, 1934, (oil on canvas)

Yves Tanguy, The Minotaur, 1943

Sonja Sekula, African Moonsun, 1945, (oil on canvas)

Joan Miro, Barcelona Series, 1944, (lithograph)

Joan Miro, Barcelona Series, 1944, (lithograph)

Joan Miro, Barcelona Series, 1944, (lithograph)

Louise Bourgeois, Difficut Pivoting, 1947

Stanley William Hayter, 1947

Yves Tanguy, Rabdomancia, 1947

Joan Miro, Sunrise, 1959

Joan Miro, The Ladder of Escape, 1959

Joan Miro, The Morning Star, 1959

Joan Miro, Woman in the Night, 1959

Joan Miro, Still Life with Old Shoe, 1937

Arshiloe Gorky, Garden in Sochi

Joan Miro, Woman and Birds

Joan Miro, Woman and Birds at Sunrise, 1946

Janet Sobel, Illusion of Solidity, 1945

Theodoros Stamos, Untitled, 1946