Yesterday I went to see Miró: la terra, an exposition dedicated to the Catalan artist held at Palazzo dei Diamanti. This was my second attempt with Miró. The first was many years ago – I was still in primary school – the teacher brought us to the exposition and tried hard to make us understand what’s behind the surface of such apparently simple and meaningless sketches. That time she failed. Luckily enough, now I’m grown up. After so many years, watching Miró’s painting had a totally different effect on me and, even if I know little about art.  At least this time I could appreciate the message conveyed.

The exposition is laid out in a way that allows you to follow the artist’s mental path while he mutated style and obsessions along his life. It goes from the usual detailed description down to the totally surreal, purely symbolic, conceptual, two-dimensional, synthetic and ironic deconstruction of both reality and painted art itself.

Most paintings are a little cryptic and require you to stare at them a few minutes before you begin to recognize all the symbols and why different materials were used to build that meaning. Look at this one, “Catalan landscape: the hunter” (from MoMA New York), painted in 1923-24 when the artist was in the early stages of his career. We see a rural landscape, with yellow sunny sky and unshaped land. That triangle on the upper left is the head of a man, with one eye, one ear, a strange hat (the traditional Catalan barretina), mustaches, beard, a pipe. His body is a vertical thin line ending in a squared thin line for his legs. Arms are rendered by a wavy horizontal. In his right hand is has a prey and in the left a smoking rifle. In the bottom part a big fish (a sardine, says the paint) is partly morphed in a lizard and tries to capture a fly with a long tongue.

Note how the artist hints us at the meaning behind symbols, using a surprisingly low number of carefully selected signs. That big eye, partly hidden behind what could be a tree with one single leaf, is looking at us. Is that Miró himself, amused by the feelings this painting generated in the watcher?