Joan Miró.
New Beginnings

Joan Miró is known for his colourful surrealist dream worlds. Particularly after his long-awaited move into his own large studio in Palma de Mallorca in 1956, however, the Catalan artist extended his concept of painting in a hitherto unfamiliar direction. He questioned the whole of his previous œuvre, reworked early pieces or returned to works that had been left incomplete. This moment of self-criticism and a new beginning forms the starting point for the exhibition

From now on the artist saw conventional easel painting as a limitation and tried to find new expressive forms. Thus, for example, he ‘painted’ with fire and scissors rather than a brush, expanded his technique to textiles or overpainted classical paintings from the flea market with impulsive brushstrokes. In this way he produced large-format and surprisingly raw paintings and sculptures that remain resolutely contemporary.

The exhibition includes 74 works, mostly from the late 1960s, the 1970s and the early 1980s. Most come from the holdings of the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona as well as the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró in Mallorca, and are being shown in Switzerland for the first time.

Joan Miró and Paul Klee
‘Klee fut la rencontre capitale de ma vie’ [Klee was the key encounter of my life], Joan Miró said of Paul Klee, fourteen years his senior, and the Swiss artist is also said to have spoken highly of the Catalan’s work to his Bauhaus colleague Wassily Kandinsky. Even though the two artists never met in person, the encounter with Paul Klee’s work made a lasting impression on Joan Miró. Both artists, for example, engaged with children’s drawings and prehistoric art, and this is apparent in the reduced formal language of their own works. Thanks to his study of the Swiss artist’s work Miró also succeeded in finding a balance between figurative Surrealism and abstraction.

Catalogue
To coincide with the exhibition a richly illustrated catalogue is being published, with an examination of Miró’s late work, the areas of common ground between Joan Miró and Paul Klee’s work and thought as well as essays about Joan Miró’s large studio in Palma de Mallorca and the reworking of his own works. The catalogue is published by Snoeck Verlag, Cologne, and costs CHF 38.

Collaboration
The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Zenturm Paul Klee and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona.

Supported by

    Kanton Bern    
    Bundesamt für Kultur    
    Burgergemeinde Bern    
    Ursula Wirz-Stiftung    
    Ruth & Arthur Scherbarth Stiftung    
    Der Bund