Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/963162
16 maltatoday SUNDAY 8 APRIL 2018 News The exhibition will stay open until the 30th June, at the President's Palace, Valletta THE curtain was raised yesterday on one of the most historical art exhibitions to ever take place in Malta, with Valletta welcoming two of modern art's greatest masters. The Picasso and Miró: The Flesh and the Spirit exhibition consists of 44 works by Joan Miró and 100 etchings by Pablo Picasso, brought to Malta by Fundacion MAPFRE in collaboration with the office of the President of Malta and the Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti. Both men remain two of the 20th century's most fundamental artists, with Miró one of the leading lights of the Surrealist movement, and Picasso eminently the founder of Cubism. Both created their own universe, giving them a unique place in the history of art, located at the centre of the avant-garde as independent creative figures. The works by Miró were created between 20-40 years after those of Picasso. The latter's are plates that date from his Suite Vollard of 1930, while the latest paintings by Miró date from 1978. Still the works share a number of characteristics, of which the most important is perhaps a reflection on the process of artistic creation. But while Picasso's questioning of the creative process is based on his own circumstances – and the Suite Vollard identifies with such personal elements of his life as sensuality, love, death and tenderness – Miró's reflection is much more abstract and spiritual in nature, with no references to the artists himself and instead looking to the cosmos, nature and woman in all her varied aspects. A MODERN ASSAULT ON THE SENSES PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES BIANCHI Joan Miró rejected the constraints of traditional painting, creating works "conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness," as he once said