THE EXHIBITION
Picasso, Miró, Dalí – Making Worlds
Three major figures of twentieth-century art, three creative universes, one shared possibility: transforming imagination into new forms to create worlds.
The exhibition “Picasso, Miró and Dalí Making Worlds” traces the emergence and development of some of the most significant avant-garde movements of the twentieth century through the work of three of their most celebrated protagonists: Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí. Three distinctive and revolutionary visions, united by a shared legacy that forever transformed the face of modern art and gave rise to symbols and visual languages that continue to shape our present.
Divided into five sections, the exhibition follows the key stages of the three artists’ careers, beginning with their formative years: the cultural ferment of Catalonia — the birthplace of Miró and Dalí and a place of artistic apprenticeship for Picasso — and the decisive influence of Modernisme and Noucentisme.
From their shared break with academic conventions to their move to Paris, the epicentre of the avant-garde, the exhibition explores the decisive encounters and sudden turning points through which each artist developed a profoundly personal visual language, helping to shape the artistic landscape of the last century.
The sign , the color and the material become tools for inventing new realities.
PABLO PICASSO
In Pablo Picasso’s works, the human figure is transformed, while his artistic exploration spans different visual languages and materials, from paper to ceramics.
JOAN MIRÓ
Joan Miró creates an essential and poetic visual world of free forms, spontaneous marks and vivid colours, where lightness, rhythm and invention coexist.
SALVADOR DALÍ
Salvador Dalí, by contrast, draws the viewer into a visionary dimension, where reality is distorted and intertwined with dreams, symbolism and reflections on the inner world..
Salvador Dalí’s Divine Comedy
The common thread running through their artistic trajectories is undoubtedly Surrealism, understood both as an artistic movement and as a privileged means of expressing the unconscious and individual identity. It also represents the very heart of the exhibition. Drawing on the imagery of Surrealism, although created during the artist’s mature period, Dalí’s series illustrating the 100 cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy is presented here in its entirety for the first time in Lugano.
An encounter between literature and art, demonstrating how a work can transcend the centuries and inspire new interpretations.
The exhibition continues
The exhibition continues with a section devoted to the consolidation of the artists’ individual artistic visions in the post-war period and their growing international recognition. Finally, it explores the technical eclecticism shared by Picasso, Miró and Dalí. Painting, sculpture, printmaking, poetry, cinema, applied arts, and interventions in architecture and public spaces converge in the body of work of these three artists, who challenged conventional classifications and expanded the boundaries of artistic expression.
Featuring nearly 200 works, “Making Worlds: Picasso, Miró and Dalí” stages an imaginative dialogue between three visionary minds, revealing affinities and contrasts that extend far beyond their shared geographical origins.
Moving beyond a simple celebration of their artistic legacies, the exhibition examines the trajectories of these three masters as a reflection of the history of the early twentieth century, marked by wars and dictatorships that continued in Spain until the mid-1970s. Particular attention is therefore devoted to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and the year 1937, when it was created, interpreting the work as a powerful manifesto against war.
Graphic Art as a Field of Experimentation
The substantial presence of prints highlights the increasingly prominent role of printmaking in twentieth-century art, when it often became a preferred medium for avant-garde artists seeking experimentation and the renewal of their artistic language. Setting aside the exceptional case of Pablo Picasso, regarded as the greatest etcher of the twentieth century, whose vast printmaking output frequently anticipated his own artistic developments, it becomes clear that most artists of the period explored printmaking as one of the many technical possibilities within their artistic repertoire.
Curated by
Curated by Vittoria Mainoldi, Picasso, Miró, Dalí – Creating Worlds brings together three extraordinary artistic figures, highlighting not only their distinctive artistic identities but also their ability to experiment, reinvent images and open up new perspectives on reality.