DUBLIN.- Miró considered art an intrinsic part of life, with magical attributes that had to be recovered. To achieve this goal, he did not hesitate to transgress the academic conventions of painting and, like other artists linked to the Surrealist world, he sought inspiration in primitive artistic manifestations: formally simple, yet loaded with sacred connotations.

Taking as references prehistoric art, the medieval masters and popular culture, Miró wanted to go beyond the mimetic representation of reality by progressively simplifying forms and leaving only what is essential. This practice gave rise to a singular sign language, which crystallised in the early 1940s and from which he was never to depart. In his work, the night, the woman, the constellations, male and female sexes, the ladder of escape and the bird became expressions of a universe of creation and renewal.

Miró Universe emphasises the use of signs in Miró’s work through a concise and careful selection of paintings and sculptures from his later years, belonging to the fonds of the Fundació Joan Miró. These include the 1973 paintings Personnage, oiseau I, II and III, simplified compositions in which Miró enlarges the images until they practically occupy the entire canvas with energetic gestures. The exhibition is completed with the sculptures Femme, oiseau and Femme, also from the early seventies, and whose titles and compositions are based on the same vocabulary of signs.

Dublin is the third venue of this touring exhibition, which will subsequently visit the Spanish embassies of Brussels and Paris between 15 March 2019 and 15 January 2020, after the exhibitions in Rome and Berlin. The collaboration agreement, signed on 20 December 2018 by the Fundació Joan Miró, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, and Abertis Foundation, also includes related educational activities aimed at local school communities. In addition, the Fundació Joan Miró has produced a publication for the occasion that includes, among other, a text by Ester Ramos, Curator of the Collections of the Fundació Joan Miró, which reviews the genealogy of the sign in the artist’s work.