Joan Miró is considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Sometimes pigeonholed as a referent of the early avant-garde, mainly Dadaism and Surrealism, Miró is also considered a precursor of Abstract Expressionism and conceptual art. On the other hand, he was also interested in spiritual matters, fascinated by mysticism, visions and dreams. His works also allow for political readings, considering his opposition to Franco's dictatorship.

Forty years after his death, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is dedicating an exhibition to the works he produced between 1920 — the date of his first trip to Paris — and 1945, a "fundamental period," characterized by his constant ebullition of ideas, ranging from the initial magical realism to a personal vocabulary of constellated or floating signs on ambiguous backgrounds.

"In this evolution, the attraction that prehistoric art — including cave paintings, petroglyphs and statuettes — exerted on Miró, who advocated a return to the dawn of art with the intention of recovering its original spiritual meaning," write the organizers of the exhibition, titled Joan Miró. Absolute Reality, Paris 1920-1945.

"During his first stay in Paris in the 1920s, Miró had the opportunity to meet Max Ernst, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Picasso... and there he will try to find his own voice within the avant-garde. It was there that he began to develop his emblematic language, based on eyes, shooting stars, insects, insects, body parts.... "It is a fundamental period when "the language of signs that would configure the very personal pictorial style of the Catalan artist arises and consolidates," the curator of the exhibition, Enrique Juncosa, told news outlets. 

This was also the period when he began to produce his dreamlike works, "fundamental for the history of modern art and also for Joan Miró's career," according to Juncosa.

If you're planning a trip to Spain, the exhibition is the perfect excuse to visit Bilbao, an old industrial and port city, and a hotspot for food and modernity.