Miro’s legacy lives on in exhibition

Published Oct 8, 2015

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Zurich - Joan Miro's grandson stayed true to the Spanish painter's surrealist tenets as the opening of a Zurich exhibition of the artist's work by driving in on a Harley-Davidson, covering himself in paint and firing blanks from a pistol.

Galerie Gmurzynska is showcasing paintings, bronze sculptures and mixed media pieces by Miro senior, the “most daring, exciting, enfant terrible of the 20th century” according to the venue's chief executive, Mathias Rastorfer.

But it was the antics of grandson and art historian Joan Punyet Miro that took centre stage at the launch celebrations on Saturday night.

He donned bright pink garb as he drove through the Razzia restaurant, once a silent cinema, on a revving motorcycle.

He fired a pistol loaded with blanks, danced to the Korean pop hit Gangnam Style and covered a huge canvas with luminescent paint poured over his naked body, completing the work with a brush.

Joan Punyet Miro also payed tribute to the birth of the avant-garde Dada movement, at a nearby venue in the city, 100 years earlier.

“That was the beginning of revolution and the provocational spirit of Dadaism to try to make tabula rasa with everything, because there were terrible moral and ethical bankruptcies,” he told the crowd, who also heard Miro's younger grandson, Teo Punyet Miro, read a poem.

Miro's early works on display included drawing-collages featuring newspaper clippings of bathers and babies, industrial stencils and goldfish decals. Rarely seen late works included textile assemblages from the “Sobreteixim” series.

The eclectic nature of the works, said the gallery's Rastorfer, was a testament to Miro's fear “more than anything else, of repeating himself”.

Reuters

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