Joan Miró

Spanish, 1893 - 1983

Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Catalan-Spanish painter, sculptor, ceramicist, and printmaker. A key figure in the development of modernism, Miró was one of the great originals of 20th-century art. He drew on cubism and anticipated surrealism, establishing a unique visual language.

Miró was born in Barcelona in 1893, and in 1920 moved to Paris. He cultivated relationships with artist Pablo Picasso, French surrealist painters, and American writer Ernest Hemingway. Among Miró’s most notable works is The Farm (1921–1922). This almost hallucinatory painting is an homage to the Catalan countryside and his family’s farm in the village of Montroig.

During his lifetime, the artist exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Tate Modern in London. In 1975, he opened the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona to showcase his work and promote research on modern and contemporary art.

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Two angular, cream-white buildings flanking a central, stylized tree are surrounded by brown soil, small animals, and farmhouse objects like watering cans and buckets beneath a clear, azure-blue sky in this square landscape painting. We look straight onto the buildings and slightly down onto the earth in front of us. About a third of the way up the composition, the horizon is lined with trees and mountains in the deep distance. The long, spindly branches of the central tree nearly reach the top edge of the painting and abstracted, sickle-shaped leaves are silhouetted against the sky so no leaves overlap. The far edge of the whitewashed structure to our left is cropped. The façade is pierced by two small rectangular windows and an arched hatch at the top under a winch. The back end of a horse is visible through an open door at the bottom center. Horizontal bands in front of the building suggest furrows in plowed earth, and a single stalk of corn grows up into the scene, seeming close to us. A pen protected by netting stretches out in front of the second structure, to our right of center. That wood-frame building has a triangular peaked roof, and the left half is open, like a lean-to. A goat, rooster, birds, and several rabbits occupy the pen. Watering cans, buckets and pails, a hoe, newspaper, lizard, and snail are spaced around the buildings. A tiny stylized person, perhaps a baby, appears in the distance between the buildings near a well where a woman works. A covered wagon, a round mill, trees, and plants fill the rest of the space between the buildings. A disk-like moon hangs in the sky to the right of the tree. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, "Miro. 1921-22." — Joan Miró, The Farm, 1921-1922, oil on canvas, Gift of Mary Hemingway, 1987.18.1

The Farm

Joan Miró · 1921-1922 · oil on canvas · 1987.18.1

As tall as the spindly trees behind it, a bronze, abstract, free-standing sculpture is made up of a circle set within a shallow box, which is balanced on the tip of an upside-down, thick-legged, V shape. The textured, lumpy legs taper as they move up. A sinewy rope-like texture runs, like a hem, along the outside of the pointed arch. Another form, like a lip, lines the inner edge where the legs pinch together at the top of the arch. The box balanced on the apex is nearly as wide as the legs. The box has a projecting rim, and is corrugated along the outer surfaces and the front edge, as if it had been cut down from a cardboard box. The circle centered in the box also has a projecting rim, like a tall cake pan. Within the circle, a shape like the wing of a bird appears to have been incised. A curving, bowtie-like shape protruding on a rod from the top of the box is incised with a dot at the center of another circle. — Joan Miró, Personnage Gothique, Oiseau-Eclair (Gothic Personage, Bird-Flash), model 1974, cast 1977, bronze, Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, 1992.53.1

Personnage Gothique, Oiseau-Eclair (Gothic Personage, Bird-Flash)

Joan Miró · model 1974, cast 1977 · bronze · 1992.53.1

A tomato-red, oval floating in a field of blue-violet nearly fills this horizontal abstract painting. A thin, vertical, gently waving line and a black dot float near the red oval, near the upper right corner of the canvas. The red oval is wider at our right side, like an egg. The oval, wavy line, and the dot are all outlined in white. The blue-violet background is painted with short, visible strokes, giving it a mottled look. — Joan Miró, Flight of the Dragonfly in Front of the Sun, 1968, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.23

Flight of the Dragonfly in Front of the Sun

Joan Miró · 1968 · oil on canvas · 1983.1.23

Two thin, black, straight lines create a cross above a band of widely spaced, vertical, wavy lines, all against a golden yellow background in this abstract, vertical painting. The cross and the band of wavy lines at its base nearly fill this canvas. Each end of the horizontal line of the cross ends with a black disk. Three crimson-red lines emanate like rays from the sides of each disk. The top of the vertical line of the cross ends with a scarlet-red form that flares into a straight line across the bottom and curves up and over, to our left. That shape is outlined in red and partially filled in with the same color at the curving end. At the bottom of the cross, seven vertical wavy lines are spaced along a horizontal line, all in maroon red. A turquoise-blue star floats over the black disk to our right, and three curved lines in blue, yellow, and red arch in a short, stylized rainbow near the upper right of the painting. The background is mottled with tan and ochre yellow, and speckled with topaz-blue dots mostly in the upper left and the lower right corners. The artist signed and dated the work in tiny letters near the lower right: “Miró 1924.” — Joan Miró, Head of a Catalan Peasant, 1924, oil and crayon on canvas, Gift of the Collectors Committee, 1981.9.1

Head of a Catalan Peasant

Joan Miró · 1924 · oil and crayon on canvas · 1981.9.1

This painting displays interlocking shapes outlined in bold black lines. Bright colors fill the shapes, including red, blue, and green, with one yellow section. The shapes are stacked together, along with some solid black shapes. Some of them have black dots in them, like eyes. Some of the shapes are squares or triangles, while others are more abstract. The background outside of the shapes is off-white with splatters of black, yellow, and brown paint. The splatters are visible under some of the colorful paint within the shapes. — Joan Miró, Woman, 1976, oil on canvas, Gift of George L. Erion, 1977.45.1

Woman

Joan Miró · 1976 · oil on canvas · 1977.45.1

Prints from the Mourlot Press

Various Artists, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, André Beaudin, Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Maurice Estève, Paul Guiramand, Bernard Cathelin, Richard Florsheim, André Brasilier, Maurice Brianchon, Jean Cocteau, André Minaux, Paul Jenkins, Akira Kito, Alfred Manessier, Jean Adhémar · 1964 · bound volume with 19 lithographs · 2011.60.85

The image shows an abstract shape with five elongated triangular points arranged symmetrically around a central area, forming a star-like figure. The shape is blue and has a textured surface with small circular voids within it, set against a plain background. — Joan Miró, Untitled [plate XLII], 1958, woodcut in blue on China paper, Rosenwald Collection, 1963.11.307

Bibliography

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1989

Cramer, Patrick. Joan Miró, The Illustrated Books: Catalogue Raisonné. Geneva, 1989.

Joan Miró