CULTURE

Extensive tribute to Joan Miro set to open in Thessaloniki

In September, the Teloglion Foundation in Thessaloniki will host an expansive exhibition-tribute to Joan Miro that will run through to January 2010. The exhibition will also go on display at the Benaki Museum in Athens after its Thessaloniki presentation. The exhibition will feature 400 of the artist’s works, including his landmark «Motherhood.» It comprises drawings, gouache paintings, more than 80 ink works, 66 etchings and 22 sculptures, as well as plenty of archive material, including diaries, documents, photographs and publications. Most of the exhibits have come from the Fundacio Joan Miro and the collection of the artist’s family. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog in Greek, Spanish and English. More importantly, personal items from Miro’s workshop, such as brushes and palettes, will also travel to Greece for the exhibition – a section of the tribute will be devoted to the reconstruction of the artist’s workspace, with the use of photographs and other things with which he surrounded himself. The last large Miro retrospective to be held in Greece was at the Basil and Elise Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art on Andros in the summer of 2002. The Thessaloniki exhibition will include a larger compilation of works, such as Miro’s first oil painting in 1908, which has never gone on display outside Majorca. The Catalan painter and sculptor, born in Barcelona in 1893, is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century surrealist artists. He attended the School of Commerce in Barcelona, but simultaneously took classes at the city’s Fine Arts School. After moving to Paris in 1920, he got involved with the Montmartre art circle, where he first became acquainted with the Dada movement and later with the surrealists. Pablo Picasso had told Miro – only a few years younger than Picasso – that he considered him to be talented enough to forge new pathways in art. Miro died in 1983 in Majorca, where the foundation bearing his name is also based. Teloglion Foundation, 159A Aghiou Dimitriou, Thessaloniki, tel 2310.247.111.

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