“Jan Mirò.I miti del Mediterraneo”

The town of the Leaning Tower and the Piazza dei Miracoli is now again present on the international cultural scene with a gorgeous exhibition about one of the greatest master of the 20th century Jan Mirò . In the historical residence “ Blu Palazzo d’Arte e Cultura”, in the heart of Pisa along the Arno riversides, 110 works including paintings, sculptures, lithographs and drawings will be displayed in the exhibition “Jan Mirò.I Miti del Mediterraneo” up to January the 23rd. .The curator, Claudia Beltramo Ceppi, has paved a new way far from the consummeristic stereotypes of contemporary exhibitions. She deeply relies on emotions,”It is an exhibition to feel more than to look at” she says. The visitor is, therefore, invited to feel Mirò’s long production, from the years in Paris and the bumping into Surrealism to the return to Spain with Picasso to take part to the Civil War. Mirò is going to be deeply marked by the understanding of the tragedy and of its only way out into poetry. An escape which will become salvation. The visitor is going to follow a double journey from the illustrations of three books on Breton and Eluard, to the “room of the myths”, with some works devoted to the Minotaur, (1938) and to Daphne and Chloe, concerning the representation of force and violence of man. The myth is the mare nostrum, it is the research of the Catalan artist’s identity when he paints the earth, the nature crowded by people, insects, flowers, trees, birds, figures that fly across the vivid colors of his works. Here the sign becomes a line, an essential graphism plunged into a cosmic void. From 1935 his painting changes, it abandons the realistic model, Mirò looks at the drop of water, at the small objects found on the beach. The new turn is documented in the 22 lithographs illustrating “ Les Costellations Breton”, in the Archipel Sauvage of 1970, in “ L’espoir du Navigateur” up to the discovery of the Japanese haiku poetry, a symbol of a new more essential point of view. The artist in order to express the complexity of reality feels the urge, vital for him, to go beyond the limits of his art and through the power of poetry and myth, his two guidelines, he will go beyond painting. According to him poetry creates tension able to open space and heighten his powers as an artist, resulting in his unique style, made up of organic, flattened forms drawn with a sharp line.” My paintings- the artist himself says- are always born in a state of hallucination, provoked by some shocks or another, objective or subjective, for which I am entirely irresponsible”.
Myth is a form of conceptualization and of circular or recurring narrative structure that helps to understand the real world . According to Miro’s own words “This sort of human presence in things that is what mythology is for me. It is what makes me not consider a stone, a rock, dead things. Essentially what I paint is above all this mythology.”
The myth is also the tool to claim his Catalan identity. In front of the tragedy of civil war and a new and increasingly authoritarian government, the artists from Catalonia share the need to claim an identity that, until then, the cultural milieu employed as a narrative means. Miró found this identity in the landscape, in the light, the mountains and cultivated fields . Thence the intensely atavic identification of Mirò with nature and the landscape of the Mediterranean . The artist’s favorite subjects a sort of fil rouge throughout his long artistic production, are insects, snails and snakes, and of course women, the very symbol of Mother Nature.
Such a highly dramatic exhibition deserves a visit.
For accommodations in the heart of Pisa, we recommend our site www.tuscanyholidayrent.com which offers a flat on the ground floor of a former 17th century monastery, full of charme for its terracotta tile flooring and beautiful ceilings, at a walking distance from Palazzo Blu and from Piazza dei Miracoli. You could, as well, choose an accommodation in the countryside which is particularly impressive in this season.