Not only Joan Miró will come from Majorca to Cyprus but also Her Majesty, Sofia, Queen of Spain. She will be present at the opening evening. This is an incredible event and an honour for Cyprus.
Here is the official press release:
Mirό of Majorca
An important exhibition of the Spanish artist Joan Mirό
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 Mirό will be presented at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre [Old Power House]. Mirό 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 Mirό 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.
Mirό of Majorca will showcase more than 200 works and testimonies by Joan Mirό, including paintings, sculptures, engravings, drawings and sketches for sculptures, public art, ballet and music.
Mirό and Picasso are considered to be amongst the fathers of modern painting. An impressively multidimensional and productive artist, Mirό 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 Mirό 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 Mirό’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 ‘Αrt 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 Mirό 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.
The exhibition is also supported by: ERCO, J.N. Christofides Trading Ltd., Lumiere Services Ltd. και Group 4 Securitas. The media sponsors of the exhibition are: ANT1, O Phileleftheros, Cyprus Weekly, ANT1fm, Radio Sfera and FredTV.
Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre
19, Palias Ilektrikis (ex Apostolou Varnava), Nicosia, Tel: 22797400
Opening hours:
Tuesday-Saturday: 10:00-15:00, 17:00-23:00 - Sunday: 10:00-16:00
Coorganisers: In collaboration with:
The exhibition is organised in the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the European Union:
Sponsor:
Media sponsors: Suporters:
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