QUEEN SOFIA of Spain arrived in Cyprus yesterday for the beginning of an official visit to the island.

The Queen was formally invited to the island by Nicosia Mayor Eleni Mavrou for the inauguration of an exhibition of Spanish artist Joan Miro’s work.

“It is a very important exhibition for Cyprus and we wished to give it especial emphasis,” said Mavrou.

Yiannis Toumazis, the Director of the Pierides Foundation, initially extended an informal, verbal invitation to the Queen to attend the event when he saw her at the opening of a similar Mirσ exhibition in Thessaloniki. The formal invitation from Mavrou followed, which the Queen accepted.

The opening night of the exhibition was absolutely packed with around 200 people waiting outside, and perhaps get a glimpse of the Queen.  The crowd, including a large number of dignitaries, were packed into the exhibition space and the event “could accurately be described as a little chaotic,” said Cyprus Mail reporter Stefanos Evripidou, who attended.

The exhibition features over 200 paintings by Miro who is considered one of the most important Spanish painters and one of the definitive forces in modern art.

It will also feature over 100 other items connected with Miro and his work, such as personal letters, notes and scale models.

“We’re also very proud that his oldest existing oil painting will be on show dating back to 1908. In actual fact, many of the works in this exhibition have rarely left Majorca,” said Toumazis.

The Mirσ exhibition was organised as part of a series of events to mark the six-month tenure of the Spanish EU Presidency, while the Spanish government is also dedicating the show to the 50 year anniversary of the Republic of Cyprus.

Spanish Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, was on the island yesterday to accompany the Queen during her visit and took the opportunity to meet with Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou and President Demetris Christofias. These meetings were primarily social and courtesy visits however and not for the purpose of political discussions.

The Queen herself met President Christofias yesterday evening at the Presidential Palace, with the two attending a formal state dinner at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre following the exhibition’s inauguration.

Though Mirσ himself rejected all classifications of his painting style, he has been described by Andrι Breton, the founder of Surrealism, as “the most Surrealist of us all”. The Mirσ exhibition is also said to touch upon a little-known aspect of Cyprus history, namely the heavy involvement of the Catalans with the island during the rule of Caterina Cornaro in the 15th century.

Joan Mirσ i Ferrΰ, himself Catalan, was born in Barcelona in 1893, the son of a watchmaker.

Queen Sofia, a fluent Greek speaker, was born as Princess Sofia of Greece and Denmark in Athens in 1938, the eldest child of King Paul I of the Hellenes.  She is a known as a patron of the arts and an art-lover herself.

n The Miro exhibition is taking place at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre in old Nicosia, and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 3pm and 5pm to 11pm, and on Sunday from 10am to 6pm.  It is scheduled to run until May 30.