Galerie Gmurzynska proudly announces at its Zurich Paradeplatz headquarters, the exhibition, Joan Miró: Paintings and Sculptures. A tribute to Joan Miró (1893-1983) in continuation of our collaboration with the artist's estate since the 1990's.
This presentation combines paintings, sculptures, works on paper as well as found objects, offering a rare glimpse into Miró's artistic process and evolution, spanning from his early career masterpieces to his groundbreaking late bronze sculptures. Specially highlighted are his transgressive bronze sculptures from the 1970s and 80s, showcased as if in a museum alongside their plaster casts and the found objects which inspired them.
Miró's late bronze sculptures, which are to be found in globally leading museums and public spaces, combine craftsmanship and the poetry of the objet trouvé, a Surrealist and Dada method of bringing new life to quotidian objects. Miró's mastery of the objet trouvé is best described by his friend Joan Prats declaring, "When I find a stone, it's a stone; when Miró picks up a stone, it's a Miró."
The Surrealist origins of Miro are best represented by two large-scale early 20th century masterpieces entitled Painting (The Circus Horse), 1925 (114 x 146cm) and Painting (Mediterranean Landscape), 1930 (234 x 155cm), which prefigure by decades Abstract Expressionist action painting and the modernist monochrome.
"In pulling apart the components of illusionistic painting, Miró put the material reality of the painting forward as an object in the world, a step which rapidly lead him to collage and object assemblage."
—Rosa Maria Malet on Painting (Mediterranean Landscape)
"The life and work of Joan Miró are full of objets trouvés, for in every object, every bird, every stone, every piece of driftwood on the beach, every cloud drawn on the sky—even if clouds and birds are harder to grasp and bring down to earth—he had the ability to see as many things, forms and nuances as were there for him to bring to light. The objet trouvé is the inspiration which suddenly springs up in the presence of the lucky find, glimpsing creative promise in the object which may or may not be fulfilled later."
Joan Miró i Ferrà—better known as Joan Miró—was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist whose inventive style was extremely influential in the development of avantgarde art. He remains one of the best-known artists of the 20th century.
GALERIE GMURZYNSKA is an international art gallery with locations in Zurich, Zug and St. Moritz, Switzerland, that specialises in modern and contemporary art as well as Russian avant-garde.
The gallery was founded in 1965 in Cologne, Germany by Antonina Gmurzynska. From the beginning, the gallery was interested in organising exhibitions that had a documentary character both through the choice of themes and through its publications.
In 1996 Mathias Rastorfer became a partner of both extensions of the gallery, having been with it since 1991 when he left his position as Associate Director at Pace Gallery in New York. Under his influence and in addition to the gallery’s traditional repertoire, the work of contemporary artists such as Donald Judd, Louise Nevelson and Yves Klein amongst others, was incorporated. Ten years later the gallery opened its third branch in St. Moritz at Via Serlas, in 2003.
Forty years after its establishment, Krystyna Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer relocated the gallery from Cologne to its new flagship location in Zurich’s Paradeplatz in 2005. The building that currently houses the gallery dates back to 1857 and it is the same building in which the Dada movement was founded in 1917. The first exhibition in Zurich was a solo exhibition by Alexander Calder entitled, The Modernist, that was thoroughly endorsed by the Calder Foundation, which described it is as, 'rare to experience a presentation of this quality outside of a museum'. As with each exhibition at the gallery the show featured a fully illustrated catalogue with important essays.
Galerie Gmurzynska continues to present unique exhibitions that are both historically well researched and scientifically documented. It also continues to work with leading art historians as well as collaborating with museums on exhibitions and for the enlargement of their permanent collections. Additionally, it currently participates in several art fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze Masters in London, Salon in New York and Art Basel, Switzerland. In the past it has taken part in FIAC, Abu Dhabi and PAD New York.
