The first major exhibition of sculptures by one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, Joan Miro, opens at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park tomorrow.
Visitors will be able to wander around the large bronze sculptures in the grounds of the park, near Wakefield, and see many of his formative and surrealistic sculptures as well as significant large bronzes in the Underground Gallery, where there is also a collection of his “phantasmagoric world of living monsters”.
The exhibition is the culmination of years of work by Peter Murray, executive director of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Miro’s family, including his two grandsons Emilio Fernandez Miro and Joan Punyet Miro, who help run his estate based in Palma, Mallorca, where Miro lived.
Together they gathered up major pieces made between 1940 and 1982 from collections all over Europe and took on the massive task of transporting them to bring them to stand together for the first time in what is the largest exhibition of Miro's sculpture in Britain.
His family were inspired to work with the Sculpture Park because Miro believed sculpture should stand in the open air, in the middle of nature.
Head curator Clare Lilley said: “Miro cared really deeply about people, he made big sculptures to be with people, this survey of his sculpture has never been done before in Britain, and it is in just the right place, the sculptures need to be outside, in the countryside.”
The exhibition runs until January next year.
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