Joan Miro - Antoni Tapies - Francisco Toledo
November 3 - December 5, 1998

Reality and illusion, the terrestrial and the cosmic are the creative fuel for the passionate and imaginative work of Miró, Tąpies and Toledo. For each of the artists, a journey ensues which begins in the important and sacred domain of their native birthplaces, Miró and Tąpies's Barcelona and Toledo's Oaxaca. While each artist searches their invented worlds, inspired by the magic and freedoms of Surrealist ideas and theories, it seems that they each must keep a foot touching to the ground. At some specific time, each will bring the physical world into contact with their own created spaces by incorporating actual objects and mixing sand, clay or other properties into the oil medium.

In such quests, Joan Miró, in 1923, would write to a friend of the emphatic need to "explore all the golden sparks of our souls". He had recently completed The Tilled Field in which he described "monstrous animals and angelic animals. Trees with eyes and ears and a peasant smoking a pipe". Painted in Montroig, the family farm outside of Barcelona, where Miró was born in 1893, the place was later referred to by the artist as like a "religion". In reverence to his native soil, he elevates the significance of the most humble things, the everyday objects of farm life. Even when the artist would reside in Paris to work, it was known that he kept native grasses from Montroig in the studio as a source of inspiration. In 1933 Miró would abandon the canvas for masonite board to which textural applications are incorporated such as tar and sand as in a well-known work Rope and People of 1935 where an actual twisted rope provides the outward dimension against a background of fantastic persona.

Antoni Tąpies, born into the same Catalonian culture thirty years after Miró, will feel the same powerful forces of his own country as it shapes his creative output. From the time he is 13 and into the early 70's, Tąpies experiences periods of an oppressive environment where a stifling political atmosphere prevails over life in Barcelona. The Spanish Civil War of 1936-40, World War II and Franco's dictatorship would influence the nature of Tąpies political and personal art. In 1949, Tąpies's works are greatly inspired by the Surrealist works of Miró and Klee as in his painting The Eyes of Foliage. In this new freedom, he creates a balance of effects combining painted areas with incised symbols, signs and graphic figures. Figurative references float in a mysterious space. Tąpies would write that "figures, trees, mountains-they were all like sources of pure energy, a pure glow that suffused everything. Eyes that were moons, mouths feathers, genitals flowers, hair branches... " A more outward tribute to Miró is found in a work titled Inscriptions with Four Stripes of 1971. Miró's name, along with a number of other Catalonian intellectuals, is prominently painted into the work which now becomes much like a flag symbolizing a spirited cultural pride. Tąpies, beginning in the early 50's, would begin a consistent use of textured surfaces as with his powdered marble and bone glue mixtures which achieved a relief surface. He would call these developments "matter paintings". Elements such as marble dust, sand, hair, latex combined with oil created solid walls of matter he described as "a cosmic accumulation of millions of elements". Into these "walls" he would scratch, perforate and scrape. In the 60's he incorporates a vocabulary of physical objects-humble, simple elements necessary in daily activity-windows, ladders, chairs, beds, crosses, rope-all of which would appear either painted, suggested in sculpture or added directly to the surface. Negre y Taballold (illustrated), in this exhibition, features such an application in the twisted cloth rope that stretches against a built-up textural background.

Francisco Toledo, a Zapotec Indian, was born in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1940. Forty-seven years separate his and Miró's birthdates and Tąpies was born seventeen years earlier. He has become famous for his unique passionate devotion and generous personal contributions to his own community which have made the very name, Oaxaca, come to symbolize a kind of glowing star on the cultural map of the international artworld. Although Toledo does not perceive himself as any type of "follower" in regards to a direct influence by the work of Miró or Tąpies, there is a strong and compelling emphasis on the spiritual and physical nature found in the work of the three artists. In response to any specific connections to Miró, Toledo recognizes a shared sense of magic and spontaneity that exists. The fantastic world of Insectos, Toledo's 1998 gouache on paper work (illustrated ) where an array of fantastic jewel-colored mutated insectlife patterns a crowded but organized space, brings to mind Miró's Constellation pieces of the early 1940's.

Toledo lived in Paris in the 60's and had opportunity to see the works of European artists in the museums and galleries there.At that time, Toledo would find a general movement or trend toward the use of material matter in the works of artists suchas Tąpies, Burri and Dubuffet. In a 1960 oil painting titled Carrito de Maderas (Wood Cart), the almost monochromaticwork, dappled with a few earthy colors reveals a rough textured surface onto which a primitive drawing is literally scratched into existence. Small open pocked marks are created in an incised grid that reminds one of a tic-tac-toe game or maybe some form of scoring or keeping count. The sensation is that you have encountered the mysterious narrative of an ancient cave though the puzzling references convey perhaps a contemporary dweller. While Toledo's surfaces conjure up more of a connection to the walls of Lascaux, Tapies's relate more to urban life where the wear and tear of a busy population leaves behind its heavy impression. Depicting and referencing the most functional and everyday object such as this cart is important for Toledo as is also seen in the works of Miró and Tąpies. Bicicleta Oaxaquena, Toledo's oil and sand on canvas of 1975 (illustrated) presents another wheeled form of common transportation.

Tąpies and Toledo share the affinity to build a surface and create a physical environment for their subjects and images, blurring the ready distinctions of individual object and a larger universal context. In Bicicleta Oaxaquena, the bicycle becomes the transportation means to and through another world. The headlight attached to the handlebars lights the way through the complexities of a busy, patterned world. The colors are wonderful earth and sky hues. The sand that textures the oil becomes a reminder of our place on earth and the floating nature of the bicycle suggests for us the more liberating imaginative possibilities in terms of time and space. There is no beginning and no end visible to confine the path or direction for the journey. Perhaps one type of journey might appear in the jungle of endless curving and varied directional "roads" seen in Toledo's 1972-73 oil and sand painting, Plano de Juchitan (illustrated). This painting reminds one of the unexplainable, sometimes elaborate, paths and patterns seen from an aerial view, left in our landscapes supposedly created by alien life forms visiting this earth.

In terms of imagery, moons and half-moons and other celestial properties, which appear often in the works of a more Surrealist nature, refer to a dreamworld and places the viewer in a nocturnal setting where the conception of nature is reflected. Toledo's Untitled c. 1966 gouache on paper, in this exhibition, dark yet colorful palette of colors sets a mood and tone for the earthly and unearthly activity. A cycle of creation is represented by a bizarre chain of fish which seem to enter and exit a larger semi-human form. The fish are themselves emerging out of the mouths of each other and as they progress upwards into space it appears that a new form of being has tumbled out of the process. With the agility and grace of a dolphin, it flips midair into the glowing light of double moons. In Miró's Homme et Femme (Drawing from a Notebook)10.11.1930 (illustrated), the large ameoba-like entity floats along on a calm body of water like a child's inflatable toy underneath the moon/sun. The drawing derives from a series of notebook sketches Miró created around the time of the birth of his only child in July this very year. The alien form which we see symbolizes the creation of life, but we are left few clues as to which sex is which and the startled pin points suggesting two facial expressions of surprise is no doubt concerning the mystery that new life is forming within their single body.

The two paintings by Tąpies, Negre y Taballold (Blackend Towel) of 1973 and Ull (Eye) of 1974 (illustrated) reveal surfaces which are greatly textured by numerous bold applications and manipulations of material, both in the painted treatments and underlying and surface areas. Ull's most unique and disconcerting element is the surrealist effect of the eye which the artist has glued centrally in the painting. Both of the works take on the sense of solid object, a wall or a door. As the viewer comes upon this piece, much like a tourist in a city, the curiosity to discover what lies behind and beyond is confronted by the eye that looks at us as if to challenge our own expectations.

Miró, Tąpies and Toledo exhibit the urge to go beyond painting in concept and often create talismanic presence out of the ordinary. Like Miró, Toledo and Tąpies would live and work in Paris for a period of time but a return to their native environment was an absolute necessity, essential for the greater purpose of their work. Each artist would have a tremendous ability to form endless mutations fired by unique and rich imaginations. Individually, Miró, Tąpies and Toledo each achieve a level of personal work which defies any instant categorization.

Carol McCranie, Associate Director
Exhibition curated by: Emilio Steinberger

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