Walking around the thirteen rooms that make up 'Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape' I was reminded that Miró, like all great artists, can be subjected to various curational agendas but never be contained by them. The premise of this exhibition, curated by the Tate and Teresa Montaner of the Fundació Miró Barcelona, considers Miró's creative output in the context of the major social and political upheavals caused by the Spanish Civil War. This is of course a very worthy theme, both with regards to the specific external forces Miró was exposed to, and more widely by opening up discussion about artistic choice in time of war.

The first thing to note is that by the time Miró returned from Paris, where he had spent most of the 1920s, he already possessed a well-developed personal vocabulary fostered through contact with Surrealists such as Breton and Masson. Therefore it was this already well established language that the political forces acted upon. While he'd been away Catalan language and culture had been suppressed following the military coup of Primo de Rivera in 1923. Under the Republican government which gained power in 1931 there was a brief respite, but by 1936, when Franco's Nationalist forces swept in, regional differences would once again become anathemas. Spain was about to be torn apart by terrible acts of violence perpetrated by both sides. Whether Nationalist or Republican every Spaniard had no choice but to be political.

Secondly, as much as these political pressures would shape his output I think it is important to recognise that the roots of Miró's pictorial language are found in those early works which engaged with the landscape and people around Mont Roig. As already mentioned his deep sense of Catalan identity would subsequently be overlaid by Surrealist dimensions, but those farmlands, where the interactions of man and nature afforded him myriad forms, remained with him throughout his career. Miró said: "That which interests me above all else is the calligraphy of a tree or the tiles of a roof, and I mean leaf by leaf, branch by branch, blade by blade of grass." These interests were to become collateral damage. Hemmingway, that great aficionado of Spain who would go on to write so powerfully about the conflict, had already given an indication of the psychic damage Miró would have felt. In 'A Farewell to Arms' he had written: "Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates." There is no magic key to any great artist, but perhaps appreciating these roots this is the closest we can come to understanding how Miró's deep poetic sensibility, placed under direct attack, found its response. "The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion." he said.

Conflict has always provoked artistic statements, and in the context of this exhibition and Spain's history, I was reminded more than once of Goya's 'Disasters of War'. The figuration of the life-affirming tapestry cartoons becomes the vehicle for the depiction of the most appalling acts of cruelty and horror. It is hard not to treat the rictus grins and creatures of the night which populate this suite of etchings as direct forebears of Miró's quirky monsters. The truncated limbs and exploded anatomy of pastels made in 1934 reverberate with the increasingly violent acts of suppression by the army. By 1936, when Franco and the Nationalists advanced from the south, Miró's output had diversified: bold abstract paintings on masonite were produced alongside more considered and methodically painted figuration. No doubt these works were shaped by current events but their power remains undiminished today. This is often not the case for art that is produced primarily as propaganda, which must of course transmit its message readily. With Miró, as with Goya before him, the indignation strikes deeper than doctrine - art becomes a battle cry for humanity.

 I felt Miró's poetic outrage found it strongest expression in the 'Barcelona Series' of fifty lithographs produced in 1944. As the war years recede the later rooms of this exhibition contain many significant examples of Miró's mature work, his individual spirit of sol y sombra only possible via this troubled legacy. If, as Camus said: "Every authentic work of art is a gift offered to the future." one must also recognise that the gift can sometimes be an uncomfortable testimony, and still give thanks.

A través de tus huesos irán los olivares
desplegando en tierra sus más férreas raíces,
abrazando a los hombres universal, fielmente.

Around your bones, the olive groves will grow,
unfolding their iron roots in the ground,
embracing men universally, faithfully.

Miguel Hernandez 'Al Soldado Caído Internacional en España.'

'Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape' continues at Tate Modern until 11 September 2011