The exhibition entitled Paisatges (Landscapes) includes a group of works related to landscape as a subject, and centred on both the earlier and later work of Miró. The origin or starting point is the Master’s earliest painting on canvas, consisting of an untitled landscape dating from 1908 and whose reverse includes a later intervention by the artist, dating from 1960 (of which an accompanying photograph gives evidence). With regard to the Master’s last creative period, one can observe three large canvasses painted in the mid 1970s, endowed with a remarkable level of formal and iconographic synthesis, with the black colour as the central element within a context where Joan Miró re-examined his own works, purging and even destroying some, but also reviving some subjects, compositions, as well as references of his own past trajectory.

Landscape, at large, is a recurrent theme in Miró’s creative task and has to do with an animistic vision fully integrated into nature, allowing us to establish a link between Montroig and Mallorca, both becoming the first and the last of several important places which provided Miró with vital and creative inspiration. In this exhibition the Pilar i Joan Miró Foundation has decided to emphasize the presence of the earth-sky pairing and the horizon line separating them. Modest Urgell, his teacher of Landscape at Escola Llotja de Barcelona, exerted a remarkable influence on young Miró. From his teaching Miró acquired some formal aspects such as the crepuscular horizon line, which cuts many of Miró’s compositions, as well as the moon, the star, the sun and diverse symbols full of spirit and attitude, meaning his love for nature and solitude as well as inner undress. The exhibition leaves some token of this link in a group of drawings in which Miró pays homage to Master Urgell. In the last works one can observe a clear tendency towards simplification and concentration on what is essential, a total freedom of style and an interest in getting back to past references of his own trajectory. When working on landscapes, Miró expresses emphatically his intention of achieving the maximum intensity with the minimum means.