Of these, 80 per cent are being shown in Asia for the first time, and 11 works have never been loaned out by the museum before. They include paintings, sculptures, lithographs, posters, audiovisual materials and more.
Born in Barcelona in 1893, Miró turned to poetry, in particular, to learn about the diversity and richness of the world, says Marko Daniel, the director of Fundació Joan Miró.
“He was really curious about the way in which avant-garde poets were developing new ways of interpreting our reality – the reality and complexity of our world,” Daniel says.
“There are always many, many different ways of reading and interpreting a poem. Each word has a meaning, but the combination of the words in a poem gives rise to multiple different layers of reading and interpretation. And that’s something that he wanted to recreate in his own art throughout his life.”
Through his works, Miró sought to push the boundaries of traditional academic painting. For Women, Birds (1973), the artist forwent typical canvas and instead chose tarpaulin as the base for his emotive, gestural brushstrokes, while allowing paint to splatter freely as he worked. And the splashes and drips in works such as the triptych Fireworks (1974) seem full of expression.
Preliminary Collage for Painting (1933) gives insight into Miró’s creative process. It features cut-outs of illustrations from newspaper advertisements which Miró rearranged, thus freeing them from the meaning they had had in the newspapers, according to Daniel.
As Miró’s art evolved in the course of the 20th century – a tumultuous period that encompassed World War II and the Spanish civil war – he persisted with interpreting abstract notions of poetry and the concrete elements of objects.“Like most great artists, he is really concerned about the relationship that his work has to the reality in which we live,” Daniel says.
“That encompasses all these different elements, say, from the humble ones – everyday objects – to the great metaphysical questions about the meaning of life and our place in the universe.”
Influenced by surrealism and Dadaism, the artist often pieced together various collected objects to form unexpected figures and characters, drawing out poetic meaning and layered dimensions from their materiality.
Woman in front of the Moon (1976) and The Wind Clock (1967) both feature a repurposed cardboard hat box; for the former, Miró opened it up and treated it as an atypical canvas, while in the latter, he added a wooden spoon to symbolise the wind clock’s hand.
“He had this sense of humour,” Daniel says, referring to Miró’s Figure (with Umbrella), which was originally created in 1931 but disappeared during World War II. The piece on display is a 1973 replica authorised by the artist, and shows a figure assembled from an umbrella, a coat stand, a branch of dry leaves and a rod.
Meanwhile, Woman and Bird (1967) – not to be confused with Miró’s 22-metre high sculpture in Barcelona bearing the same name – is a character created from a stool, an ensaïmada (Spanish pastry) box, a gym weight, a police hat and a pebble, which have all been cast in bronze, just like The Wind Clock.“He really wanted to ennoble the humble objects of everyday life,” Daniel says.
While Miró’s art has often been described as childlike – there is even a playground with a slide and interactive screens in one child-friendly section of the exhibition – Daniel cautions audiences not to simplify his works and their meaning.
“One thing that I know as an art historian is that children are incredibly sophisticated,” he says. “Children can look at art and see things that adults very often cannot see, because our education limits our vision very often. And children can have an openness of mind.”
Hong Kong artist GayBird is also presenting Bird Code (2023), a sound installation that features the chirps of birds in nature; Leelee Chan is showing Untitled (2023), an examination of Hong Kong’s contemporary material culture; and Zoie Lam has drawn illustrations inspired by Miró for an educational booklet and a special display.
“When we approach his work with openness, it’s not that his work is what gives us the answers, but his work allows us ourselves to be creative, and to find our own answers to the questions and engage with others,” Daniel says.
“This show allows [us to see] the way in which Miró, at different points in his life, expressed his interest and concern with our relationship to the world,” he adds. “We know that the world is always beyond our understanding, and that the only thing we can do is to try to understand our own place in the world.”
“The Poetry of Everyday Life”, 2/F, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Mon-Wed, Fri 10am-6pm and Sat-Sun 10am-7pm. Until June 28. Standard tickets are HK$30.
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