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Mirü
of Majorca
An important exhibition of the Spanish artist Joan Mir ü
at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre
Associated with the Pierides Foundation in the presence of Her Majesty Queen
Sofia of Spain
10 March - 30 May 2010
An important exhibition with works by Joan Mir ü
will be presented at the Nicosia Municipal
Arts Centre [Old Power House]. Mirü
of Majorca will be inaugurated on 10 March
2010 and will last until 30 May 2010.
On the initiative of Nicosia Municipality and the Pierides
Foundation, Her Majesty Queen Sofia of Spain has accepted their invitation to
visit Cyprus for the inauguration of the exhibition.
His Excellency the President of the Republic of Cyprus Mr.
Demetris Christofias will also attend the opening.
The exhibition is co-organised by the Nicosia Municipal Arts
Centre, the Pierides Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Culture-Cultural
Services, the Pilar i Joan Mir ü
Foundation of Majorca, and the Teloglio
Foundation of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in
collaboration with the Spanish Government, the State Corporation for Spanish
Cultural Action Abroad [ SEACEX]
and the support of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation.
This is the first time that an exhibition of such magnitude
focusing on the work of a great artist is organised in Cyprus. This prominent
exhibition is organised in the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the
European Union and the Spanish Government dedicates the event to the 50th
Anniversary of the Cyprus Republic.
Mir ü
of Majorca will showcase more than 200 works and
testimonies by Joan Mirü,
including paintings, sculptures, engravings, drawings and sketches for
sculptures, public art, ballet and music.
Mir ü
and Picasso are considered to be amongst the
fathers of modern painting. An impressively multidimensional and productive
artist, Mirü
was the narrator of mythical and lyrical stories. A
poet of images, whose idiom is characterised by signs and symbols,
metaphorically illuminated and charged, rising from the subconscious.
He was born in 1893 in Barcelona and at the age of 14 he
enrolled at the School of Economics while at the same time he secretly studied
at the School of Fine Arts and later at the Galí Academy, until 1915. In 1920,
he moved to Paris where he participated in the artistic lobbies of Montmartre
and was acquainted first with the Dadaists and then with the Surrealists under
the influence of whom he started shaping a special and personal way of painting.
André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, described him as “the
most Surrealist of us all”.
In 1921, he had his first solo show in Paris, while ten years
later, his first solo show in New York.
In 1929, he marries Pilar Juncosa, who gave birth to their
daughter, Dolores, and 3 years later he returns to Barcelona. He engages in
scenography and designs costumes for Ballets Russses, Sergei Diaghilev’s ballet
company. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, in 1936, he returns to
Paris with his family. In 1941, the
Museum of Modern Art in New York organises his first
retrospective exhibition. The following year, he returns to settle in his family
house. In 1955, he stops painting and starts working on graphics and ceramics.
Next year, he moves to Palma de Majorca, and works in his atelier, designed by
his friend Josep Lluís Sert. Four years later, he begins to paint again and
exhibits in USA and Japan. In 1975, he founds the Joan Miró Foundation-Centre
for Studies on Contemporary Art. He died on Christmas Day in 1983, at his
atelier at Palma de Majorca, at the age of 90.
Miró’s workshop in Majorca, part of which will be represented
at the exhibition along with documents, notes, furniture, objects etc. will
convey the atmosphere and the internal aspect of Miró’s way of thinking. The
works date back to 1908 (his only surviving early landscape painting) until his
death in 1983. However, the exhibition in Nicosia focuses on mature Mir ü
in Majorca and the works he created in his
workshop designed by his architect friend Josep Lluís Sert in 1956. This
workshop is a landmark in Mirü’s
work, because it is in this workshop that he reviewed his work and his course up
to then and decided to make a new beginning. This is a period of endless
independence and quest.
Having drawn experiences whilst in America, and having been
acquainted with the painters of ‘Action painting’, he now lives within the
ambience of European ‘ Árt
Informel’. He is influenced by prehistoric cave painting, the art of the Far
East, his region’s own, Catalan folk tradition, and the twelve-tote musical
technique. His eagerness to enter new fields is evident in his own artistic
technique - stains, spatters, streams, graphics, tinctures, cracks, sutures,
nails, ropes, use of random elements, of violent gestures, persistent deepening
in the expressiveness of materials.
His themes include bioform surreal symbolic figures: the woman,
birds, landscapes, the realm of the sky, the sun, the moon, the constellations.
Yiannis Toumazis, Director of the Nicosia Municipal Arts
Centre and the Pierides Foundation is the General Coordinator of the exhibition;
Marios Eleftheriadis, Professor at the Limoges - Aubusson School of Fine Arts in
France is the Curator and Maria Louisa Lax-Cacho of Pilar i Joan Mir ü
Foundation of
Majorca is the Scientific Curator.
A variety of events, such as educational programs, seminars
and guided tours will be organised during the exhibition.
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