Joan Miró’s Spanish Dancer: Variations on a Theme

Mini-Symposium (Lectures in English); In conjunction with the closing of the exhibition

Thurs June 20 | Entry to the event at 6:30 pm; Event begins at 7 pm | No extra charge | Sponsored by the Joan Lessing Modern Art Symposium Fund 

Flamenco’s sensuous arm work, articulate hand gestures, and percussive steps inspired Joan Miró to produce numerous sketches, drawings, paintings, and collages of Spanish dancers over a period of sixty years, from 1921 to 1981. These witty and playful works are rendered in a variety of styles – from realism and cubism to surrealism and abstraction – exhibiting Miró’s constant experimentation with form, medium, and technique. Miró’s dancers transform the mythic, popularized image of the erotic dancer, introducing a modernist vocabulary of visual signs that express the artist’s origins in an evolving personal yet universal avant-garde language. Two of Miró’s works from the Israel Museum’s collection, Painting (Spanish Dancer), 1927, and the drawing Spanish Dancer, 1924, are at the focus of this exhibition, complemented by an ensemble of works on loan from important institutions worldwide. Upper: The Hunter (Catalan Landscape) Montroig, July 1923-winter 1924 © The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Purchase Middle: Untitled (Dancer), ca. 1921 © 2012. Digital image, SCALA Florence, Lower: Spanish Dancer (“Olee”), 1924 © Successio Miro/ADAGP, Paris 2013