Upcoming Exhibitions

	Woman, Bird and Star (Homage to Picasso), February 15, 1966/April 3-8, 1973, Joan Miró
Miró: The Experience of Seeing February 13–May 18, 2014 SAM Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries

This exhibition, drawn entirely from the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, offers a fresh assessment of the late period in Miró’s work—a body of work that audiences in the United States have not had the opportunity to fully appreciate. The exhibition brings together 48 paintings, drawings and sculptures made in the period between 1963 and 1983 that testify to the artist’s ingenuity and inventiveness to the very end of his life. Bold and colorful paintings employing his personal visual language alternate with near-abstract compositions. Although Miró had experimented with sculpture in earlier periods, it is only in the late years that painting and sculpture stand in direct dialogue with each other—a principal feature of this exhibition.

The paintings and sculptures in the exhibition plumb the process of making art, part of Miró’s concern since his earliest works. In his quest to transcend easel painting, Miró expanded pictorial space across vast canvas fields, using an increasingly simplified language to turn accidental or fortuitous motifs into calligraphic signs. In his sculpture, the inspiration of found objects is more overt, linking the work to his Surrealist explorations of the 1920s as well as the sculptural inventions of his contemporary, Pablo Picasso. Miró also employs many of the same forms and signs in his sculpture, as in his paintings, creating a synergy between the two bodies of work. His work during these mature years represents a personal language where painting and sculpture are equally valued.

–Chiyo Ishikawa, Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture & Catharina Manchanda, Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Exhibition organized by the Seattle Art Museum and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

Contemporary and modern art programs at SAM are supported by a generous group of donors in honor of Bagley Wright.

Corporate Sponsor is Christie’s.

Woman, Bird and Star (Homage to Picasso), February 15, 1966/April 3-8, 1973, Joan Miró (Spanish 1893–1983), oil on canvas, 96 7/16 x 66 15/16 in., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. © 2013 Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Reproduction, including downloading of Joan Miró works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.