- Dates
- —
- Curated by
- Carme Escudero i Teresa Montaner
Joan Miró: Parade of Obsessions
Joan Miró: Parade of Obsessions is an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, drawings, graphic works and lithographs that demonstrates how Miró’s plastic-poetic vocabulary is shaped by a series of images that are used repeatedly and independently of the technique chosen.
These images include women, the number thirteen, the number nine, azure blue, female genitalia, stars, shooting stars, three hairs, the ladder of escape, eyes, the sun, the moon and birds.
Miró reproduced some of these images in his work practically from the outset of his artistic career, but it was only in the latter half of the 1930s, most likely influenced by the historical events he was living through, that his painting became more symbolic and his range of images broadened and acquired a more symbolic category.
‘Three forms which have become obsessions with me represent the imprint of Urgell: a red circle, the moon, and a star. [...] Another recurrent form in my work is the ladder. In the first years it was a plastic form frequently appearing because it was so close to me – a familiar shape in The Farm. In later years, particularly during the war, while I was on Majorca, it came to symbolise “escape”; an essentially plastic form at first – it became poetic later.’
(Interview with James Johnson Sweeney, 1948)
In the 1940s, Miró consolidated his own language and systematised this series of images, which thereafter would even suggest the titles of his works. As his painting evolved towards greater synthesis and gestural freedom, these images became more refined and isolated, but they would always form part of his poetic representation.
In the 1960s, while Miró was working on a choreographic, poetic and musical performance based on his work and creative process entitled L’Œil-Oiseau, he assembled these same images and defined them as a cortège des obsessions.
The aim is above all to familiarise the public with Miró’s vocabulary through a reproduction of these drawings, which the visitor will use throughout the exhibition to identify these obsessions – rather than delving into their symbolic meaning, which is analysed in the catalogue texts.
