Joan Miró lithograph show another coup for The Base gallery at Greenham

Joan Miró: ‘Painting and Poetry’: exhibition of lithographs at The Base at Greenham

Review by LIN WILKINSON
Photographs by PHIL CANNINGS

This show is yet another coup for The Base gallery at Greenham, here the first stop after London’s Southbank for the Hayward’s touring exhibition of Miró lithographs.

One of the 20th century’s most important artists, Miró was a painter, sculptor, ceramicist and printmaker, who was allied with both Surrealism and Dada. These lithographs were made in 1974, in response to the work of French Surrealist poet Robert Desnos, specifically his 1922 poem ‘Les Pénalités de l’Enfer’. Here we enjoy two creative minds, imaginations running free, working together a half-century apart.

Curated by Camilla Conway and The Base team, the hanging not only reads like a narrative, but each lithograph is presented in a wide landscape format, with the paper folded centrally, so each print resembles a double-page spread in a book. This sense is furthered by the first and last prints. In black and white, one with amorphous forms, the other with star or sunburst elements, they act as visual endpapers.

The Surrealists were concerned with dreams, the subconscious, the unconscious and automatism, and with the Dadaists shared an interest in chance and accident. This show reflects all those concerns, and is redolent with Miró’s particular visual language. Solid, flat colour-fields work with abstract elements, linearity, recurring motifs, signs, symbols and disproportionate scale, with Miró’s work always reflecting an innocence and freshness.

The prints are made in black and white, or colour, or a combination of both, and the show can be enjoyed for the sheer joy inherent in the work; for the exuberant, luscious colour; or for the ultimately mysterious motifs, which remain elusive, somehow withholding from the viewer a definitive meaning.

Miró maintained that his work was never wholly abstract – that his expressive biomorphic forms and drawn elements stemmed from some sort of reality. Yet there is always a sense of mystery and individual memory in his work. It remains intensely personal.

Black is integral: as background, a defined colour area or a drawn motif. There’s a sense of space, rhythm and mobility within each print. The individual elements are never crowded, they remain entire and discrete, yet simultaneously interact with each other.

In some works, primary colours sit back, creating harmonious chromatic compositions; in others colour is juxtaposed, layered, contrasted or separated, to create tension and dazzling, explosive colour.

Viewers can also access relevant videos and music in the show.

As a bonus, visitors can enjoy ‘Sketch’, a montage of small works by two of The Base’s resident artists Samantha Emmons and Mark Bijak, in the adjoining Runway Gallery.

The show runs until Sunday, April 27 (Tues-Sun, 10-5). Book a time slot. Entry £8.50; concessions.