Pesaro dedicates a major exhibition to Miró's best-known graphic works

Palazzo Mosca - Musei Civici di Pesaro opens its summer exhibitions on July 9: one dedicated to Joan Miró, a famous Catalan artist of the 20th century, and the other to the young Pesaro artist Michael Bardeggia as part of the Dante celebrations.

The first, titled, Joan Miró graphic works 1948-1971, will be on view until Oct. 3, 2021 and is organized by the City of Pesaro - Department of Beauty and Sistema Museo, in collaboration with The Art Co. The exhibition aims to document through four important series the artist’s graphic techniques, among the most significant in his wide production: Parler seul (1948-50), Quelques Fleurs pour des Amis (1964), Ubu Roi (1966) and Le Lézard aux plumes d’or (1971).

Among the earliest artist’s books, the graphic series Parler seul was presented in 1950 and was the result of a collaboration between Miró and the publisher Aimé Maeght, who had placed at his disposal the presses of Fernand Mourlot, the best Parisian printer of the time. Inspired by the text written in 1945 by the poet Tristan Tzara in the Saint-Alban psychiatric hospital, the lithographs constitute a kind of interactive dialogue between word and image, resulting in one of the first verbo-visual works.

An intimate account dedicated to the art world figures who were part of Miró’s life, Quelques Fleurs pour des Amis was published in 1964. Each lithograph presents their ideal flower or their unseen character and existential peculiarities. The intent of the Fleurs is to show gratitude, love, and admiration for artist friends such as Max Ernst, Nina Kandinsky, Henry Matisse, Fernand Mourlot, and Marlene Dietricht, but also for publishers and patrons, such as Mr. and Mrs. Maeght.

Ubu roi, from 1966, is probably the most significant series in Miró’s entire body of graphic works that relates to a play by Alfred Jarry, published in 1896 and anticipating many of the elements underlying Surrealism and the Theater of the Absurd.
Ubu roi is a parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with references also to King Lear and Hamlet, the Sophoclean tragedy of Oedipus Rex, the work of Rebelais (Pantagruel and Gargantua) to Pinocchio. Ubu is despotic, capricious and is characterized by coarse humor, almost a prototype of the twentieth-century dictator. Miró associates him with the figure of Francisco Franco.

Finally, Le Lézard aux plumes d’or, from 1971, evokes a lizard with golden feathers, a fantastical creature that emerges from the work with a glance or a movement and then loses itself again in the texture of color and lines. The use of different expressive registers, from the marked graphism emphasized by the absence of color, as well as the combination and alternation of black, green, red, blue and yellow surfaces, make this series a small anthology of Miró’s work.

At the same time as the exhibition dedicated to Miró, Palazzo Mosca also presents the solo exhibition In Viaggio con Enrica by Pesaro artist Michael Bardeggia: thirty illustrations from his illustrated book Dante, mi’ babbo. The exhibition is on view until October 3, 2021. His illustrations stem from a historical and literary research on characters from the 14th century, from Boccaccio to Cavalcanti to Dante; the artist also deals with the history of classical Greece and mythology, leading to a study of the use of color in the medieval period, particularly that of Giotto. The narrative unfolds through the eyes of a little girl, Enrica; she hopes to see her father again to relive that missed embrace. Her memories meet and intertwine with those of a nun who experienced that same pain, a woman who welcomes and reassures her, telling her in her own way about a very special Journey, the one experienced by her father who is none other than Dante Alighieri.

For info: www.pesaromusei.it

Hours: Tuesday to Sunday and holidays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. From Aug. 1 to 31 open also on Mondays.

Pesaro dedicates a major exhibition to Miró's best-known graphic works

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.