Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape at the Tate Modern

The famous Catalan Surrealist artist, Joan Miró i Ferrà, 1893-1983, lived through and documented some of the most significant events of the twentieth century.

Aidez l'Espagne, 1937

He was born in Barcelona and, after training as an artist there, he frequently travelled to Paris and became a key figure in the Surrealist movement. Miró remained in France with his young family during the Spanish Civil War and expressed his protests explicitly in the aptly named Aidez l’Espagne and Le Faucheur, 1937. He returned to Spain in 1940 after the Nazi invasion, and experienced a kind of internal exile under Franco, working in secret at home but gaining fame abroad for his post-war artistry. His response to the Second World War is more disguised in the Constellation paintings of 1940-1941, criticising fascist aggression while living under the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini’s ally.

Constellation: The Morning Star, 1940

Gabriel Orozco on show at the Tate Modern

Later this month Tate Modern will open its doors for a retrospective of Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, the largest presentation of his work in the UK to date. Although Orozco is globally acknowledged as a gifted sculptor, this exhibition of over 80 works will also showcase the artist’s photography, drawing and painting.

A modified Citroen DS in La DS 1993

Orozco is known for his experimentation with both man made and natural objects. His alteration of the classic Citroen DS car to create La DS 1993, which features in the exhibition, is an early example of Orozco’s love of manipulating physical objects to produce something new. He sliced the car into thirds and removed the centre to exaggerate its streamlined design. But the most famous and striking of Orozco’s works is Black Kites 1997, a human skull on which Orozco drew a checkerboard pattern to create an unnerving memento mori, bound to turn heads at the Tate Modern.

Black Kites 1997

The exhibition’s curator, Jessica Morgan, has been following Orozco’s art since the two lived in New York in the early 1990s. She said: “Gabriel Orozco is an artist we have a long relationship with. Orozco’s work is playful as well as thought provoking and we hope the visitors will be as captivated by his limitless imagination as we have been over his two decades of work.”