Grand Palais, Paris
3 October 2018 – 4 February 2019
His homeland, Catalonia, offered him inspiration, Paris his first springboard, and Palma de Mallorca the great studio he had always dreamed of. Between these places, Joan Miró created an oeuvre that is devoid of anecdotes, mannerisms, or any complacency towards modes of expression. To achieve this, he constantly questioned his pictorial language, even if it broke his momentum. Although he was interested in the twentieth century avant-garde, he did not adhere to any school or any group, being wary of artistic chimeras. From the 1920s onwards, Miró expressed his desire to "murder painting" and developed innovative practices. His work presents itself as a tool of protest and bears witness to his struggles. He never ceased to grapple with materials in order to affirm the power of the creative gesture. Characterised by this "primitive" energy, he is one of the few artists, with Pablo Picasso, to have launched a challenge to surrealism and abstraction (which he always considered a dead end). An inventor of forms, Miró translates into poetic and powerful terms the freedom of which he was so fiercely jealous and uses the full force of painting.