JOAN MIRÓ: SIGNS AND FIGURATIONS

The work by Joan Miró in the State Collection of Contemporary Art comprises eighty-five paintings, collages, sculptures, drawings and weavings by the renowned Catalan artist. On extended loan to the Porto Municipality and on deposit at the Serralves Museum, the collection spans six decades of Miró’s career, from 1924 until 1981. It provides an outstanding introduction to Miró’s work and his major artistic preoccupations.

One of the great “form-givers” of twentieth-century art, Joan Miró (1893—1983) was also an aesthetic assassin who challenged the traditional limits of medium specificity. Miró’s art communicates across mediums: painting engages in a dialogue with the artist’s drawing practice; sculpture speaks to Miró’s woven objects; and collage – the yoking together of disparate entities – functions as a master principle through which the artist mined the depths of the real.

The work in the exhibition does not follow a chronological, linear format. It is arranged thematically in an attempt to provide a holistic view of the artist’s career. Individual galleries are dedicated to Miró’s development of a sign language; his encounter with advanced abstract painting in Europe and America; his interest in process and the expressive gesture; his complex responses to social trauma in the 1930s; his novel approach to collage; the impact of East Asian aesthetics on his drawing practice; and, most importantly, his abiding interest in the nature of materials.

Support: Sonae Arauco e CIN – corporação Industrial do Norte S.A.