October 08, 2014

JOAN MIRO: LIFE & ART




JOAN MIRÓ: LIFE & ART




JOAN MIRÓ

1. LIFE & WORK

(I) CHILDHOOD AND WORK, TO 1919

Miró came from a family of craftsmen. His father Miquel, the son of a blacksmith, was a goldsmith from the vicinity of Tarragona in southern Catalonia; his mother, Dolors Ferrà, was the daughter of a carpenter from Mallorca. He initially obeyed his family’s wishes that he follow a business career by studying at the Escuela de Comercio in Barcelona from 1907 to 1910, but in 1911 an attack of typhus, coupled with nervous depression, enabled him to abandon the course. He recuperated in his parents’ country house at Montroig, south of Tarragona, a peaceful place to which he often returned in later life and in which his artistic vocation and devotion to nature were confirmed. Plants, insects, simple forms of life; the stars, sun, moon and sea, especially the Mediterranean; the cultivated countryside itself, together with elements of rural existence, all later found their way into his work.

In 1907 Miró began his artistic training in Barcelona at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios de la Lonja, where Picasso had studied 12 years earlier; his teachers were Modest Urgell (1839–1919) and Josep Pascó (1855–1910). In 1912 he entered the escuela de arte run by the great teacher Francesc Galí (1880–1965), and there met the potter Josep Llorens Artigas, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. Galí noticed that Miró had an aptitude for colour but difficulty in delineating shapes, and therefore blindfolded him so that he would acquaint himself with the forms by touching them before drawing them or modelling them in clay. Miró’s first paintings date from this period, for example The Peasant (1914; Paris, Gal. Maeght, see 1981 exh. cat., p. 49). In 1915 Miró left the Escuela Galí and began attending drawing classes at the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc, where Artigas was again a fellow student and where he met Joan Prats (1891–1970), who became another great friend. In 1918 Miró became one of the first members of the Grupo Courbet, an association of artists founded by Artigas with other students from Sant Lluc.

Between 1915 and 1918 Miró briefly painted in a manner that he himself described as Fauve, using strong, bright colours. His tendencies, however, to geometry, broad brushwork and a clarity of construction distanced his work from the earlier movement. During this period he painted figures, as in his portrait of V. Nubiela (1917; Essen, Mus. Flkwang), as well as landscapes and views of villages in the province of Tarragona, for example The Road from En Güell (1917; New York, MOMA). 1918 was a decisive year: Miró held his first one-man show in the Barcelona gallery run by Lluís Dalmau, a key figure in the Catalan avant-garde, who in 1912 had dared to exhibit the Paris Cubist painters. It was vital to Miró’s development that Barcelona was then a very lively cultural centre that attracted foreign artists seeking refuge from World War I.

Miró remained faithful to the brilliance of colour of his early work, but under the influence of Paul Cézanne and Cubism he continued to emphasize the underlying construction of his pictures. In his works of 1918 to 1922 he introduced a meticulousness and precision of drawing, not out of an interest in illusionism or in a slavish adherence to perceived reality but as a means of concentrating attention on particular details. This new tendency is especially evident in paintings such as Vegetable Garden with Donkey (1918; Stockholm, Mod. Mus.) and Montroigthe Church and the Village (1919; Spain, priv. col., see 1986 exh. cat. by R. S. Lubar and others, no. 16). The self-portrait sometimes known as Young Man in Red Shirt (1919; Paris, Mus. Picasso) and subsequent works, such as Standing Nude (1921; Chicago, IL, Alsdorf Found.), display a stylization and flatness, which can perhaps be traced to the Romanesque paintings that had greatly impressed him in the Museu d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. The general sense is of containment, as opposed to the almost uncontrolled colour and violence of the previous period.





(II) PARIS 1920 - 1939

The failure of Miró’s exhibition of 1918 caused him to reconsider his methods, particularly after his move to Paris in 1920 after a trial visit there in 1919. He worked initially in Pablo Gargallo’s workshop at 45 Rue Blomet. In 1921, thanks to Lluís Dalmau, he held his first exhibition in Paris at the Galerie La Licorne but failed to make any sales. Following the exhibition and in many succeeding summers, he returned to his refuge in Montroig. There, after a period of reflection, he began work on The Farm (1921–2; Washington, DC, N.G.A.), his best-known painting of the period, with which he seemed to return to the simple things that he found around him in the Tarragona countryside. The apparent ingenuousness of detail and innocence exuded by objects and organic forms alike masks only partly the growing sophistication of Miró’s conscious and carefully elaborated visual language. None of the dealers to whom he showed the painting was interested in buying it, but he later sold it to Ernest Hemingway, with whom he had struck up a friendship at a gymnasium where they both boxed.

In 1923 there were signs of another change. The Tilled Field is representative of this period, which follows on from The Farm in its mixture of recognizable natural forms with more or less invented shapes; colour is now treated with less restraint, freed from the demands of realism. The stylized realism of his previous portraits is still in evidence in the treatment of the woman and cat in the Farmer’s Wife (1922–3; priv. col., see 1986 exh. cat. by R. S. Lubar and others, no. 22), but the main direction of his work, already evident in Vegetable Garden with Donkey, was towards an explosion of form verging on abstraction. This development culminated in Harlequin’s Carnival (1924–5; Buffalo, NY, Albright–Knox A.G.), which can be regarded as Miró’s first characteristic image, in which the space is populated by fantastic shapes suggestive of living organisms, no matter how tenuously figurative they at first appear. Miró here established the limits of abstraction, to which he would remain faithful until c. 1960, characterized by an urge to retain at least vestigial references to perceived reality.

However resistant Miró felt to being part of wider artistic movements, he was influenced during the 1920s by the spirit of both Dada rebellion and Surrealism. André Breton himself remarked that ‘Miró is the most surrealist of us all’, in spite of the fact that Miró never officially joined the group. In Paris in 1925 Jacques Viot’s Galerie Pierre held not only a one-man show of Miró’s work but also an exhibition of Surrealist painting, which included Miró along with Picasso and Paul Klee.

Miró’s most abstract early paintings were virtually monochromatic canvases produced between 1925 and 1927, often dominated by a blue background, as in Painting (1925; New York, Guggenheim). These were to prove a powerful influence on the later development of abstract art, particularly in the USA, where the succeeding generations associated with Abstract Expressionism and colour field painting both owed much to his example. In works such as This Is the Colour of My Dreams (1925; priv. col., see 1986 exh. cat. by R. S. Lubar and others, no. 42), in which the title is inscribed next to a pool of blue paint, he used writing to change the significance of apparently abstract shapes, creating a kind of concrete poetry that recalled similar methods used in the previous decade by Guillaume Apollinaire and by Dadaists such as Francis Picabia.

Head of a Smoker (1925; Chicago, IL, Mr & Mrs M. G. Neumann priv. col., see 1986 exh. cat. by R. S. Lubar and others, no. 41) features the undulating biomorphic shapes that Miró was to favour in his subsequent work. In 1928, after a trip to the Netherlands, he produced a series of Dutch Interiors such as Dutch Interior I (1928; New York, MOMA), based on postcard reproductions of Old Master paintings. In these a greater curvilinear freedom was introduced to the sharp definition of shapes that had characterized earlier works such as The Farm. He reinterpreted other works by earlier artists in a series of Imaginary Portraits such as Portrait of Mrs Mills in 1750 (after Constable) (1929; New York, MOMA). During this period he also incorporated collage elements into paintings such as Spanish Dancer (1928; New York, Acquavella Gals, see 1986 exh. cat. by R. S. Lubar and others, no. 59) as a means of enriching the surface; a group of these was exhibited in 1928 at the Galerie Georges Bernheim, Paris.

Miró’s marriage in Palma de Mallorca on 12 October 1929 to Pilar Juncosa, a cousin on his mother’s side, followed by their move to Paris, provided him with the stability and concentration that he always needed for his work. Paradoxically this domestic tranquillity initiated a period of extreme rebelliousness in his art. Between 1929 and 1931 he sought to break all conventions including, on occasion, the very notion of painting itself; he even spoke of ‘the murder of painting’. He began to produce reliefs such as the wood and metal Construction (1930; New York, MOMA) and sculptural assemblages such as Sculpture-object (1931; Amsterdam, Stedel. Mus.), and he intensified his use of collage by incorporating unusual materials. His spirit of experimentation was especially evident in Drawing-collage (1933; New York, MOMA) and other similarly titled works made at Montroig in summer 1933, in which he combined humour with compositional freedom, and a series of collage paintings initiated in 1933, such as Painting-collage (1934; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.), in which he relied both on intuition and on a meticulous and rational examination of form.

From 1934 to 1936 Miró produced a series of Wild Paintings, such as Rope and People I (1935; New York, MOMA), which manifested a violence that had heretofore generally been kept under control. Aggression, sexuality and drama here took a deformed and grotesque human form which was emphasized by strange and unexpected materials and surfaces; in some cases paint was mixed with sand and applied to cardboard, while in others he scrawled graffiti on masonite or over paper prepared with tar.

A particularly important painting from this period, marked by a shocking conjunction of intense imagery and shrill colour, is Still-life with an Old Shoe (24 Jan–29 May 1937; New York, MOMA), painted at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The political tensions of the period are likewise reflected in The Reaper, also known as Catalan Peasant in Revolt (1937; lost, see Dupin, 1962, p. 329), which he painted for the Spanish pavilion of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris in 1937 but which disappeared when the pavilion was dismantled. The rage against injustice that it embodied was categorically expressed also in the poster that he designed for the Republican cause, Help Spain in which the slogan ‘Aidez l’Espagne’ was emblazoned over the image of a figure with outstretched arm and clenched fist.





(III) PAINTINGS 1939 – C. 1950

In 1939 Miró settled in Varengeville, a small village in Normandy, where he sought refuge from the conflict in Spain and in Europe at large. There he produced a series of pictures named after the town, for example A Drop of Dew Falling from the Wing of a Bird Awakening Rosalie Asleep in the Shadow of a Cobweb (Dec 1939; Iowa City, U. IA Mus. A.), in which he made recourse to memories of his childhood and of the countryside of Montroig. In such works he expressed a poetic wonder at the universe in a solitary communion with objects and living things, by means of imagery of almost childlike innocence: skies filled with stars, birds and schematic female figures all engaged in a sacred dance. These are among the high points of Miró’s art and of his vision of the world.

On his return to Spain, Miró spent some years in quiet retirement because of his opposition to the Franco regime. Nevertheless his art continued to evolve. During 1940–41, in Palma de Mallorca and in Montroig, he painted a series entitled Constellations. These pictures, such as the Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers (1941; New York, MOMA), represent the culmination of the abstract tendencies of his early work. The first major retrospective exhibition of his work, held in 1941 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, was of great importance in gaining him wider international recognition; the exhibition catalogue was the first major study of his work.

During 1942 and 1943 Miró developed elements from the Constellations in an intense burst of experimental activity. He worked almost exclusively on paper in a variety of media including oil, gouache, watercolour, pastel, coloured pencils, Indian ink, and pencil. Works from this period, such as the watercolour Woman, Bird, Star (1942; Lucerne, Gal. Rosengart, see 1986 exh. cat. by R. S. Lubar and others, no. 125), are marked by great spontaneity and elegance.

The success of Miró’s New York retrospective and of his 1945 exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, also in New York, led to a commission for a mural measuring 3×10 m for the Gourmet Restaurant, Terrace Hilton Hotel, Cincinnati (1947; Cincinnati, OH, Thomas Emery’s Sons, see Dupin, 1962, p. 404). In 1946 he exhibited for the first time in the Galerie Maeght in Paris, with which he thereafter maintained a close relationship.

The fullness of Miró’s art emerged in the 1940s. Bullfight (1945; Paris, Pompidou) is typical of this period in its graphic style and rounded forms, by which colour masses are contrasted with line drawing. Women at Sunrise (17 June 1946; Kansas City, MO, Nelson–Atkins Mus. A.) relies on a similar combination of drawing and coloured shapes on a neutrally coloured background. One of the major works of this period is The Red Sun Gnaws at the Spider (2 April 1948; New York, Stephen Hahn, see 1986 exh. cat. by R. S. Lubar and others, no. 135), in which the characters are almost completely abstract, and two of the shapes appear surrounded by a halo, the whole set against a uniform green background.

In general Miró established a dialogue between two or more figures. Occasionally he linked the separate elements with a line, as he had done in the Constellations, for example in Dragonfly with Red Pinions in Pursuit of a Snake Gliding in a Spiral towards a Comet-star (1951; Barcelona, Fund. Miró), although the festive atmosphere of the earlier series is now less in evidence. In other works such as The Little Blonde in the Amusement Park (1950; Berlin, Neue N.G.), colour is the decisive factor in defining the principal shapes. It could be said that a certain coarseness creeps into the joy and gaiety of the early 1940s, although one can still enjoy the play of pure colour in such witty works as Mural Painting for Joaquím Gomis (oil on fibro-cement, 1948; Barcelona, J. Gomis priv. col., see Dupin, 1962, p. 555).





(IV) EXPERIMENTS WITH PRINTMAKING, CEREMICS, SCULPTURE AND PAINTING IN THE 1940’s AND 1950’s

Having thus completed the elements of his artistic vocabulary and self-contained world of imagery, Miró nevertheless sought new challenges by introducing further techniques in a continued defiance of accepted conventions. He returned to printmaking and in 1944 completed a series of 50 black-and-white lithographs  entitled Barcelona , which he had begun in 1939: aggressive images full of monstrous, threatening characters, a private denunciation of war.

Miró also began at this time to work with ceramics in collaboration with his friend Josep Llorens Artigas. Having produced his first vase in 1941 (Paris, Pompidou), from 1944 to 1946 he decorated irregularly shaped fragments of pots, which had been broken during the firing process. Typical of these were the Plaques completed in 1945–6 (see Corredor-Matheos and Pierre, 1974, nos 13–45). Miró again worked with Artigas from 1953 to 1956, this time on a series collectively known as Lands of Great Fire: cups, plates and extremely varied shapes, in which Miró, with Artigas’s technical assistance, explored the sculptural possibilities of clay. The French title, Terres de grand feu, made punning reference not only to the firing process and to the medium (terre cuite, Fr.: terra cotta) but also to the prevalence of natural shapes in works such as Monument (1956; Hamburg, Mus. Kst Gew.). Architectural forms also feature in large-scale works such as Portico (h. 3.6 m, 1956; New York, Guggenheim).

Prior to 1950 Miró had exhibited a series of sculpture-objects in Paris, but it was only after his involvement with ceramics that he began to produce sculptures on a larger scale. In 1954 he carried out a series of seven Projects for a Monument (Barcelona, Fund. Miró), in which he combined bronze, stone, wood and cement with more unusual materials such as porcelain, leather and even a telephone bell.

Between 1949 and 1950 in Barcelona, Miró produced 55 paintings and approximately 150 drawings, sculptures, objects and prints reflecting two distinct and contrasting approaches: on the one hand carefully wrought and reflective, on the other extremely spontaneous. He continued in the 1950s to develop the methods he had used in the previous decade, but in works such as Personage on Cloudy Background (1953; Paris, Gal. Maeght) he began to favour a less precise line, as if to dissociate the figures from the more abstract signs that came progressively to dominate his painting. His activities as a printmaker, which had heretofore been limited to etchings and lithographs printed in black, from 1948 included a wider range of media such as colour lithographs, colour etchings, drypoints, woodcuts and later carborundum prints; on occasion he added hand-coloured elements, as in the Parchment series (1953), in which he superimposed bold designs in bright watercolour on to etchings printed in black on irregularly shaped sheets.





(V) AFTER 1960

Miró’s work underwent a profound change in 1960, when he began to use black both to outline shapes and to fill them in. His later work is dramatic, even tragic, with colour often suppressed or counteracted by the weight accorded to black, as in Woman and Bird (1964; Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fond. Maeght). His faith inabstraction was expressed during this period with particular eloquence in large canvases such as Blue II (1961; Paris, Pompidou), in which broad strokes of colour are set against sensuously painted backgrounds, as in his paintings of the mid-1920s; the simplicity of gesture and boldness of scale and handling make these among his most impressive and influential later works.

In his last years, before old age began to limit his apparently irrepressible vitality, Miró continued to experiment with different techniques. He collaborated with Joan Gardy Artigas (b 1938) on ceramics, with Josep Royo (b 1945) on tapestries and with the Barcelona theatre group Claca on the presentation of a play, Mori el Merma, inspired by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi (1896). He worked prolifically during his later years as a printmaker, notably in a series of highly inventive livres d’artiste printed in a variety of techniques, such as A toute épreuve (1958, with 77 woodcuts accompanying poetry by Paul Eluard), Ubu roi (1966, with 13 colour lithographs illustrating Jarry’s text) and Journal d’un graveur (1964, 15 drypoints and one colour etching published in 1975 in three volumes). Many of the books that he illustrated. Miró also produced a large number of posters, often for his own exhibitions but also in response to political causes, at a time of strong popular pressure against the declining Franco dictatorship, for example Amnesty International (1976, see Corredor-Matheos, 1981, pl. 93).

Miró’s experiments with ceramics were succeeded from 1960 to 1963 by a group of sculptures, some very large, for the gardens of the Fondation Maeght at Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and by ceramic murals on which he collaborated with Josep Llorens Artigas, beginning with The Sun and The Moon (both 1958; Paris, UNESCO), for which he was awarded the Guggenheim Foundation’s Grand Prize. These were followed by a number of commissioned ceramic murals such as those for Harvard University (1960), the Guggenheim Museum in New York (Alicia, 1966), Barcelona Airport (1970) and the Kunsthaus Zürich (1971). His use of cement and ceramic fragments recalled techniques used in the Parque Güell (Barcelona) and other architectural works by Gaudí, a cultural hero in Catalonia.

From 1966 Miró worked intensely on sculptures based principally on small objects, often objets trouvés, which he joined in surprising ways. Stones, branches and other objects discovered on his walks along the beach at Montroig, as well as manufactured items, were wedded in a spirit that still owed something to Surrealism but that also revealed his need for contact with nature and simple things, as also in bronzes such as Lunar Bird (1966; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.). An element of fun remains, particularly in brightly painted bronze sculptures cast from juxtaposed objects, such as Seated Woman and Child (1350×600×350 mm, 1967; Barcelona, Fund. Miró), in which an ordinary chair acts as a stand-in for a figure. Miró’s final work, completed posthumously, was the monumental sculpture Woman and Bird, which was installed in gardens on the former site of the Barcelona abattoir.

© 2009 Oxford University Press

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A4016&page_number=1&template_id=6&sort_order=1&section_id=T058574#skipToContent 

You may visit Joan Miro: The Experience of Seeing past exhibition news at Seattle Art Museum to click below link from my blog archive.

http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/05/miro-experience-of-seeing-at-seattle.html





FEMME ET OISEAU SOUS LA LUNE 1977

Oil on Corrugated Cardboard

Dimensions: 45 × 42 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





DEFILE DE MANNEQUIN 1969 ( DETAIL )




DEFILE DE MANNEQUIN 1969

Original Lithograph

Dimensions: 120 × 86.5 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





DEFILE DE MANNEQUIN 1969 ( DETAIL )




HOMENATGE A JOAN PRATS 11, 1971

Lithograph

Dimensions: 65 × 86 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





L’ENRAGE ( THE ANGRY ONE ) 1967

From the Series  From the Edition of 75, Numbered in Pencil Lower Left Center

Original Etching, Aquatint and Carborundum Printed in Colors on Mandeure Rag Paper

Dimensions: 89.4 × 60.6 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





HOMENATGE A JOAN PRATS # 13, 1971

Lithograph

Dimensions: 75 × 100 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





PEINTURE 10, 1941 ( DETAIL )




PEINTURE 10, 1941

Oil and Pencil on Masonite

Dimensions: 14 × 77.8 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





PEINTURE 10, 1941 ( DETAIL )




QUATRE COLORS APARIEN EL MON: SHEET 1, 1975

Original Color Etching, Aquatint, and Embossing on Arches Wove Paper

Dimensions: 88.9 × 63.5 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





PAINTING: THE FRATELLINI BROTHERS 1927

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 130 × 97.5 cm

Photo: Robert Bayer, Basel / © Successió Miró /

Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP

Fondation Beyeler





GRAND TRIPTYQUE NOIR, 1969

Etching, Aquatint and Carborundum in Colors

Dimensions: 159 × 118 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





THE ESCAPE LADDER 1940

Gouache, Watercolor, and Ink on Paper

Dimensions: 40.0 x 47.6 cm

Credit Line: Helen Acheson Bequest





HEAD, BIRD, 1977 ( DETAIL )




HEAD, BIRD, 1977

Indian Ink, Lithographic Ink Tempera

And Wax on Paper - 39 3/8 X 27 3/8 in.​​​

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, © Successio Miró /

Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, ADAGP, Paris, 2014





HEAD, BIRD, 1977 ( DETAIL )






PERSONAGES IN THE NIGHT 1950 ( DETAIL )




PERSONAGES IN THE NIGHT 1950

Oil on Canvas

Scala / Art Resource, NY / Miro, Joan (1893-1983) © ARS, NY

Private Collection, New York





PERSONAGES IN THE NIGHT 1950 ( DETAIL )










BECLOUDED PERSON 1955

Lithograph

Dimensions: Composition: 75.6 x 55.3 cm; Sheet: 76.1 x 56 cm

Credit Line: Larry Aldrich Fund

© 2014 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





CONSTELLATIONS 1959

Etching on Arches Vellum

Dimensions: 45 × 36 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





AUTOPORTRAIT 1937 - 1960

Dimension: 146,5 x 97 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona





WOMAN OF THE SANDS 1969

Original Etching, Aquatint and Carborundum

Dimensions: 104.8 × 66.7 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris




PAINTING 1953

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 194.9 x 377.8 cm

Credit Line: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

In 1925 Miró’s work took a decisive turn, stimulated, according to the artist, by hunger-induced hallucinations involving his impressions of poetry. These resulted in the artist’s “dream paintings,” such as Personage, in which ghostly figures hover in a bluish ether. Miró explored Surrealist automatism in these canvases, attempting to freely transcribe his wandering imagination without preconceived notions. Although these images are highly schematic, they are not without references to real things, as the artist made clear. “For me a form is never something abstract,” he said in 1948. “It is always a sign of something. It is always a man, a bird, or something else.” In these works Miró began to develop his own language of enigmatic signs: the forms in Personage depict a large vestigial foot and a head with three “teeth” in its grinning mouth. The star shape often represents female genitalia in Miró’s oeuvre, and the dot with four rays symbolizes the vision of a disembodied eye.

Two years later Miró reverted to imagery somewhat more grounded in reality. In Landscape (The Hare), among other works, he also returned to one of his favorite subjects, the countryside around his family’s home in Catalonia. Miró said that he was inspired to paint this canvas when he saw a hare dart across a field on a summer evening. In Landscape (The Hare), this event has been transformed to emphasize the unfolding of a heavenly event. A primeval terrain of acid oranges and red is the landscape in which a hare with bulging eyes stares transfixed by a spiraling “comet.”

By the late 1940s Miró was making canvases on a much larger scale and with broader markings. Painting of 1953 is more than 6 feet high by 12 feet wide and is characterized by loose, gestural brushstrokes and stained pigments. The calligraphic drawing style and open field of works such as Personage has, in Painting, metamorphosed into bold, energetic lines in a vast, cosmic atmosphere. Yet the star and sun, the animal-like forms, and the sprays of dots are signs of the artist’s symbolic language developed in the 1920s.

Jennifer Blessing

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/2944





SANS TITRE I, 1970

Dimensions: 29 × 78 cm

Mayoral Galeria d'Art

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





UNTITLED – FROM BARCELONA SUITE M. 598, 1972

Carborundum Etching

Dimensions: 105.4 × 69.9 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





Galerie Maeght, 13 rue de Teheran, Miró, l'oiseau solaire, l'oiseau lunaire, étincelles

Lithograph - Dimensions: 64.3 x 47.8 cm

Credit Line: Peter Stone Collection of Posters by Artists

© 2014 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris







Galerie Maeght, Miró Artigas, Ceramiques Monumentales

Lithograph

Dimensions: 66.9 x 49.7 cm

Credit Line: Peter Stone Collection of Posters by Artists

© 2014 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS),

New York / ADAGP, Paris





WOMEN AND BIRD IN THE MOONLIGHT 1949

Oil paint on Canvas

Dimensions: 81.3 × 66 cm

Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY / © Successió Miró /

Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Tate Gallery, London





YOUNG GIRL 1967

Bronze

Dimension: 37 x 13 x 12 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona





DUTCH INTERIOR II, 1928

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 92 x 73 cm

Credit Line: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976

2016 Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris





SOURIS NOIRE A LA MANTILLA  1976

Color Aquatint

Dimensions: 114.5 × 74 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





PAINTING 5 – 1941 / 1974

Crayon and Oil on Masonite

Dimension: 13,5 x 53,8 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona





UNTITLED 1973

Lithograph

Dimensions: Sheet and Comp. 89.8 x 61.0 cm

Credit Line: Gift of the Museum Department of Publications

© 2014 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





THE WALL OF THE MOON, CA. 1957

Color Lithograph

Dimensions: 23.2 × 74.6 cm

© Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Dallas Museum of Art











THE JOAN MIRÓ FOUNDATION



THE JOAN MIRÓ FOUNDATION

The Joan Miró Foundation opened to the public on 10 June 1975. It had its origins in Miró's first large exhibition in Barcelona, in 1968, at the Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu. Several figures from the world of the arts saw the opportunity to have a space in Barcelona dedicated to the artist's work. However, in accordance with his wishes, the new institution was also to promote and publicise the work of contemporary artists in all its aspects.At a time when artistic and cultural life was certainly minimal, the Foundation brought a refreshing vitality, together with a new, more dynamic concept of an art museum in which Miró's art was shown alongside a wide variety of creative works by other artists - a fact that is reflected in the Foundation's full name of Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art.

http://www.fundaciomiro-bcn.org/fundaciojoanmiro.php?idioma=2















THE FOUNDATION BUILDING
The Foundation building was designed by Josep Lluís Sert, architect, co-founder of the GATCPAC (Grup d'Arquitectes i Tècnics Catalans per al Progrés de l'Arquitectura Contemporània) and a close friend of Joan Miró. It was built on land provided by the City Council in the Parc de Montjuïc.
Towards the end of the 1960s, Sert and Miró began working on the idea of a "Miró Museum" on the site. From the outset, the Foundation was designed in accordance with the principles of Rationalist architecture, with different spaces set around a central patio in the traditional Mediterranean style and with Sert's characteristic skylights. Designed to house the Miró collection, more than thirty years after it was opened the building has also demonstrated its capacity and adaptability for displaying the work of other artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and continues to be an emblematic example of contemporary architecture.
In 1988 it was enlarged so as to gain more exhibition space, provide room for new services and relocate the offices. The extension was designed by Jaume Freixa, a friend and pupil of Sert. 

http://www.fundaciomiro-bcn.org/fundacio_edifici.php?idioma=2





THE JOAN MIRÓ FOUNDATION












THE GOLD OF THE AZURE 1967

Acrylic on Canvas

Dimension: 205 x 173 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona





FIGURE,DOG,BIRDS 1946

Gouache and Watercolor on Paper

Dimensions: 21 x 31.1 cm

Credit Line:

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift, Andrew Powie Fuller and

Geraldine Spreckels Fuller Collection, 1999

2016 Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris




PLATE XXII FROM THE BARCELONA SERIES 1944

Lithograph

Dimensions:Composition: 61.9 x 47.3cm; Sheet: 70 x 52.2 cm

Edition 5

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Department: Drawings and Prints




WOMAN 1974 ( DETAIL )




WOMAN 1974

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

Dimension: 146 x 114 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona. Gift of Josep Lluís Sert




WOMAN 1974 ( DETAIL )




DAWN PERFUMED BY A SHOWER OF GOLD 1954

Watercolor and Plaster on Composition Board

Dimensions: 108 × 54.3 cm

© Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)




PRELIMINARY DRAWING FOR PAINTING 1936

Graphite Pencil on Newspaper

Dimension: 7,9 x 16,6 cm

© Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona




MAY 1968 - 1973

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

Dimension: 200 x 200 cm

©Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona










TITLE PAGE FROM ALBUM 13 - 1948

Lithograph

© 2014 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS),

New York / ADAGP, Paris




FIGURE, BIRD 1973

Collage and Acrylic on Canvas

Dimension: 209 x 137 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona




POSTER FOR INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF SURREALIZM 1947

Lithograph

Dimensions: Composition: 51.3 x 43.8 cm; Sheet: 64.5 x 46.6 cm

© 2014 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris




FIGURE 1969

Oil on Cardboard

Dimension: 21,5 x 35,5 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona




FIGURE, BIRD, STAR 1978

Oil on Canvas

Dimension: 46 x 38 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona




MUSIC OF THE TWILIGHT I - 1965

Oil on Canvas

Dimension: 16,5 x 24,5 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona










WOMAN AND CHILD 1969

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

Dimension: 61 x 50,1 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona. Gift of Pilar Juncosa de Miró




WOMEN, BIRDS 1973 ( DETAIL )




WOMEN, BIRDS 1973

Acrylic on Canvas

Dimension: 302 x 257 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona. Gift of Pilar Juncosa de Miró




WOMEN, BIRDS 1973 ( DETAIL )




PAINTING 1933

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 130.5 × 162.9 cm

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY /

Miro, Joan (1893-1983) © ARS, NY

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford




LA CALEBASSE 1969 ( DETAIL )





LA CALEBASSE 1969

Color Etching, Aquatint and Carborundum

Dimensions: 90 × 61 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris




LA CALEBASSE 1969 ( DETAIL )




THE MUSIC - HALL USHER 1925

Oil on Canvas

Dimension: 100 x 78 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona. On loan from the Generalitat de Catalunya




SOBRETEIXIM 17 - 1973

AcrylicFelt and Piece of Plastic Bucket on

Wall-Hanging Woven by Josep Royo

Dimension: 143 x 230 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona




WOMAN ENCIRCLED BY A FLIGHT OF BIRDS IN THE NIGHT 1968

Acrylic on tarpaulin (used for the grape harvest)

Dimension: 336 x 336 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona




48 FROM THE PRINTS OF JOAN MIRO PORTFOLIO 1947

Etching on Auvergne Paper

Dimensions: 28 × 22 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris





PERSONNAGE 1970

Photo: Olivier Middendorp

"Miró in the Rijksmuseum Gardens" at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam




SCULPTURE 1970

Bronze

Dimension: 37 x 34 x 16 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona




PERSONNAGE 1967

Photo: Olivier Middendorp

"Miró in the Rijksmuseum Gardens" at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam




WOMAN AND BIRDS 1968

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

Dimension: 100 x 65 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona




WOMAN, BIRDS 1973

Oil on Cardboard

Dimension: 80 x 65 cm

© Fundació Joan MiróBarcelona. Gift of Pilar Juncosa de Miró




UNTITLED FROM LE LEZARD AUX PLUMES D’OR, 1971 ( DETAIL )




UNTITLED FROM LE LEZARD AUX PLUMES D’OR, 1971

From the Series A Superb Impression of the Definitive State, From the Album Edition of 195 ( Apart From the Pencil-Signed and Numbered Deluxe Edition). One of Fifteen Color Lithographs Illustrating the Text Le Lezard Aux Plumes d’Or, a Series of the Artist’s Own Poems. Published by Louis Broder, Paris; Printed at Atelier Fernand Mourlot, Paris.

Original Lithograph Printed in Colors on Rives Wove Paper Bearing the Miró Watermark.

Dimensions: 35.4 × 100 cm

© 2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris




UNTITLED FROM LE LEZARD AUX PLUMES D’OR, 1971 ( DETAIL )




THE FLIGHT OF A BIRD OVER THE PLAIN III, 1939

Oil on Urlap

Dimensions: 89.5 x 115.6 cm

Credit Line:

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift, Evelyn Sharp, 1977

2016 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris






















JOAN MIRÓ

2. INFLUENCE AND POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION

The large retrospectives devoted to Miró in his old age in towns such as New York (1972), London (1972), Saint-Paul-de-Vence (1973) and Paris (1974) were a good indication of the international acclaim that had grown steadily over the previous half-century; further major retrospectives took place posthumously. Political changes in his native country led in 1978 to the first full exhibition of his painting and graphic work, at the Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid. The Fundació Joan Miró was inaugurated in Barcelona in 1975 in a building designed by his friend Josep Lluís Sert, housing a large number of paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints donated by the artist. In 1992, in accordance with the wishes expressed by the artist, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró was inaugurated in Palma de Mallorca; it has its headquarters in the studios of Son Abrines i Son Boter, where he used to work but in a new building designed by the architect Rafael Moneo. In 1993, the year of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, several exhibitions were held, among which the most prominent were those held in the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, Barcelona, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centro de la Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Galerie Lelong, Paris.

José Corredor-Matheos
From Grove Art Online

© 2009 Oxford University Press

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A4016&page_number=1&template_id=6&sort_order=1&section_id=T058580#skipToContent