‘ACT from the conviction that all these pure devisings of my mind will magically and miraculously find an echo in the minds of other men.’

When Miró wrote this to himself in 1941, his drawings and paintings - recognised as some of the great contributions to 20th century art - had already found their echo. Still to come, however, were other magical ‘devisings’: his sculptures.

By conceiving objects that actually exist in space, several major artists of the 20th century experienced a sense of re-inforced artistic expression, enhancing further the explosive air of freedom that permeated the first half of the 20th century. Like Picasso, Miró embraced this three-dimensional release with huge success. Jacques Dupin wrote in his catalogue raisonné: ‘part of Miró’s fascination with sculpture was his desire to get out of the painting studio, to take a breath of fresh air and to broaden his outlook in order to escape from the restraints of his daily life.’ Miró’s sculptural creations came into their own by virtue of the way their quirky forms, invested with frolicsome puns and erotic metaphors, stretched even further our notion of sculpture.

In the 1920s and 30s, Miró’s sculpture consisted, in the main, of found and assembled objects. Following a decade of collaboration with the ceramist Joseph Llorens Artigas, from around 1954, cast sculptures became his main three-dimensional preoccupation. Turning from ceramics to bronze, Miró created sculptures in which miscellaneous found and purpose-made objects were combined. In these works, he interspersed the elements and combined and separated the materials, transforming them into a pure, simplified, poetic vocabulary.

The sense of freedom that Miró experienced in these sculptures is epitomised in the ambiguity between the cast ‘found and assembled’ works and the cast ‘purpose-made’ assembled creations. Sometimes the sculpture combines both the found and made elements, other times just one or the other, but once cast in bronze, and the intangible memory is crystallized, they are unified in their sense of permanence.

This is the first time in many years that an exhibition in London has concentrated purely on Miró’s sculpture. Connaught Brown is honoured to be able to present this highly important show, revealing the amazing variety and force of poetic imagination that Miró brought to this medium in the second half of his long career.

For further information contact the gallery on 020 7408 0362.