Joan Mirò Opere ad olio, gouaches, acqueforti e litografie dal 1925 al 1981

With a rich selection of paintings and works on paper, from March 27, 1982 Galleria dello Scudo paid tribute to Joan Mirò, a Catalan artist among the leading personalities of international Surrealism, to whom the anthological exhibitions at Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and Hirshhorn Museum in Washington have been dedicated in 1980.

Large-format paintings such as Peinture, été 1936 (1936), together with Femme, oiseau, étoiles (1943), Femme et oiseau dans la nuit (1967-1970) and Femme (1976) are some of the features of an installation enriched by a series of etchings and lithographs boasting an extraordinary technical ability and witnessing the author’s imaginative and poetic energy.

“The French poet Jacques Prévert read in the surname Mirò a hidden mirror: Miroir-Mirò. And he wrote, in verses: ‘There is a miroir in the name of Mirò – sometimes in this mirror there is a universe of vineyards, grapes and wine’. A bucolic image, a naive and peasant world. But Joan Mirò is Spanish and in Spanish Mirò means ‘he saw’: a name, therefore, that announces the destiny of a seer. What did this master of contemporary painting see in his long and industrious life? What visions do the obscure and cheerful calligraphies of his paintings bear witness to, their incessant metamorphoses, the teeming radiance and the nocturnal algebras? He himself gave a possible interpretation of it: ‘My paintings are sound fields, fields of musical rhythms’. He warns: ‘I do not distinguish between painting and poetry’. And it will suffice to lay your eyes on any oil painting or gouache in this exhibition, to understand that the distinction is impossible.”

This is the beginning of Domenico Porzio’s text, opening the catalogue of the exhibition, from which the author’s indissoluble bond with his Spanish background shines through.