MADRID (AFP) — Madrid's prestigious Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Tuesday opens a retrospective of works by the 20th century Spanish surrealist Joan Miro that highlights a little known aspect of his paintings: the earth.
Around 70 paintings from the museums around the world are on show in the special exhibition "Miro: Earth."
"This exhibition, which is the largest of the year at the museum, looks at all of Miro but with one thing in particular: the earth, his Catalan roots and the exaltation of the earth," said the museum's curator, Guillermo Solana.
Miro's grandson, Joan Punyet Miro, said his grandfather "never turned his back on nature, but on the contrary lived with it and for it", as witnessed by his early works, painted just after the World War I, showing rural scenes.
"We know the Miro of the stars, of the moon. This exhibition is a deep study of a Miro that is totally unknown," he said.
He also emphasized the "anti-conformist, iconoclastic and transgressive" qualities of his grandfather who, at 80, burned five of his paintings to create new works and show his art was "more alive than ever."
The retrospective includes several works from great modern art museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Reina Sofia in Madrid.
It also includes sculptures, ceramics and paintings from private collections, some of which are being shown in public for the first time.
The exhibition, in a wing of the Thyssen-Bornemisza, one of Madrid's three great museums, is open from June 17 to September 14.
Miro died in 1983, aged 90.
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