"Miró: The Experience of Seeing"

His name may pop up in conversations about surrealism, abstract expressionism and dadaism, but Spanish master Joan Miró defied movements and easy classification. Born in Barcelona in 1893, Miró drew deep inspiration from his native Catalonia (and especially the seaside town of Mont-roig) but evolved considerably among the avant-garde icons of 1920s-era Paris — Pablo Picasso and André Breton among them. Exemplified by his heavily symbolic Still Life with Old Shoe (1937), elegantly abstracted series Constellations (1939-1941) and immersive triptych The Hope of a Condemned Man, Miró employed his own visual vocabulary to address the political landscape and illustrate the atrocities of war. Culled from the permanent collection of Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and highlighting the artist’s later years (from 1963 to 1981), the traveling exhibition “Miró: The Experience of Seeing” brings together more than 50 paintings, drawings and sculptures said to “plumb the process of making art.”