Miro at play with women, birds, stars in Istanbul show

It is not every artist who could see a woman's hat in a red farmyard faucet, but works on display in Istanbul show the 20th century Catalan painter and sculptor Joan Miro in a playful mood in later life.

"Women, Birds, Stars" at the Sak?p Sabanc? Museum features 125 paintings, prints, sculptures, tapestries and ceramics, including loans from the Miro family's personal collection.

Many were created on the island of Mallorca, where Miro moved in 1956 at the age of 63.

Inspired by the Mediterranean landscape and climate, he reduced his palette to elemental colors, and his effusive, freehand paintings evoke a fantasy world of strange creatures, expressed mainly in yellow, red, blue and black.

"The show concentrates on the late period of his career that we can define with one word: freedom," said Rosa Maria Mallet, Miro expert and director of Barcelona's Joan Miro Foundation.

"He has freedom with language, material, different techniques, and he is the master of them all ... Probably the most interesting part of Miro's work is that it opens a way for other artists."

Miro's influence on artists from Alexander Calder to Jackson Pollock was profound. More than 30 years after his death, demand for his work has not dimmed. Last month, the canvas "L'Oiseau au plumage deploye vole vers l'arbre argente" fetched a reported $13.9 million at a Christie's auction.
    
Blue moon, red sun

Oil paintings of a blue moon, which Miro gave his grandson Joan Punyet Miro in 1978 when he was 10 years old, and a fiery red sun, a gift to Punyet's brother, are on display at the Sabanc?.

"We have lent them because they are so meaningful to us," Punyet, an art historian who runs his grandfather's estate, told...