Joan Miró : The Essence of Past and Present Things is the first major survey of Miró's artistic production to be held in Belgium in more than 65 years. The exhibition explores the Catalan artist's work parallel to his traditional artistic formation and his lifelong rapport with the art of the past. This active interest took in Primitivism, Romanesque art, the Italian and Dutch Renaissance, Japanese painting and calligraphy, and the Dutch Golden Age of the seventeenth century, as well as modernist trends such as Fauvism and Cubism. Placed alongside Miró's intention to « assassinate » painting (1927) - his quest to convey poetic reality through absolute freedom by challenging traditional aesthetics and conventional painting methods - this publication explores his evolving relationship with (rather than abandonment of) the art of the past, thereby enriching our understanding of his work as a whole.

Spanning his entire career, this beautifully designed catalogue features over 150 colour reproductions of Miró's artwork, incorporating 100 exhibition loans from prestigious public and private international collections. It also includes reproductions from a rich selection of art-history books, postcards and objects that belonged to Miró personally, as well as museum postcards that the artist sent to friends between the late 1910s and early 1930s. Collectively, it allows the reader to discover the profound intellectual sophistication and meticulous work processes involved in the creation of some of the greatest masterpieces of early-twentieth-century art.