cover image Miro

Miro

Guy Weelen. ABRAMS, $85 (188pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-1536-7

This sumptuous, comprehensive critical-biographical study of Joan Miro boasts 54 tipped-in color plates, 213 in black-and-white and an engaging text by a French curator-critic. The Catalan artist evolved a sort of magic realism prior to the decisive contact with French surrealism that convulsed his worldview and led to the dream phantasmagorias for which he is best known. Weelen limns a fiercely independent innovator in revolt against orthodoxy and rigid ways of thinking or feeling. From the earliest precocious drawings through the enormous oils--austere yet vibrant--of the 1960s and '70s, Miro was protean and prodigious. This overview touches on every phase of his output, including ceramic walls, murals, sculptures with primitivist roots, surreal objects, protests against fascism, inventive watercolors that conjure up mythic figures, graphics, tapestries. ( July )