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.
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'.
Robet Motherwell, Totemic Figure, 1958
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.
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