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Joaquim Mir was one of the most famous and influential artists in Catalonian art circles in the early 20th century. A selection of 80 works, including oil paintings, pastels and drawings, gives now an extensive overview of his career at the Fine Arts Museum of Bilbao.

His early beginnings in naturalism developed into a more personal style close to Impressionism and abstraction. The exhibition also provides a chronological review of the crucial moments in the artist’s life, which took him from his native Barcelona to sojourns in Majorca, the Camp de Tarragona, the Vallès and Vilanova.

Thanks to some painstaking research and interpretation by curator Francesc Miralles, the exhibition includes some of the artist’s most mature and thoughtful pieces, together with a number of works, unknown to the general public, from several private collections. It also includes a selection of Mir’s own family films.

Although his artistic development varied between realism and abstraction, two features crop up throughout his entire output: the urge to establish a new vision of nature and an unremitting search for beauty marked by genuine creative tension.

Joaquim Mir. Anthology 1873-1940

18 May-26 July, 2009