In his
works of 1913-17 the most important are the influences of Cezanne
and the Fauvists: objects are close to each other and shine with
bright and broken colors; striped patterns make up a kind of decorative
ornament: Still Life with Rose, Portrait of E. C. Ricart, Portrait
of V. Nubiola, Prades, the Village, Ciurana, the Path. Approximately
in 1918 Joan Miro enters the so-called 'detailistic phase' (the term
was introduced by Rofols, a fellow member of the Courbet group).
Jacques Dupin, Miros biographer, called this period 'poetic realism'.
Landscapes, painted in Montroig, where the artist spent the summer
at his parents' farm, have deep perspectives which are full of methodically
painted details: The Vegetable Garden with Donkey, The Wagon Tracks.
In 1920, Joan Miro arrived
in Paris and from now on shared his time between Spain and France. In
1921-22, he created 'The Farm' the highest achievement in his 'poetic
realism'. The canvas of 132x147 cm includes the whole universe; it is
full of everyday objects, which have symbolic meanings and which make
the picture 'open to numerous interpretations'. The American author Ernest
Hemingway bought the picture because 'he saw his impressions of the Catalan
landscape and mentality reflected in it'. (p.30 in Joan Miro. By Janic
Mink. Benedikt Taschen Verlag. 1993) Two pictures that followed, The
Tilled Field and Catalan Landscape (Hunter), testify to the artist's
quick evolution from observation and imitation of the real life to unconventional
and symbolic realization of mental images. Realistic forms are forced
out by distorted shapes ' stretched, swollen, twisted; by abstract geometric
shapes - cones, circles, triangles, and lines' Remembered dreams, especially
those seen when he had to go to bed hungry, become a source of inspiration.
He confessed later that hungry hallucinations were his muse. 'Compared
to the use of ether, cocaine, alcohol, morphine, or sex, Miro's hunger-hallucinations
look almost like a monkish fasting.' (p.44 in Joan Miro. By Janic Mink.
Benedikt Taschen Verlag. 1993) In 1924, Miro met Andro Breton, Paul Eluard,
Louis Aragon and other participants of the Surrealistic group. The same
year the first Surrealist Manifesto is published. Miro executed several
more paintings in the surrealistic vein.
A relatively small Harlequin's
Carnival (1924-25, Buffalo) brought the surrealistic phase of his work
to a climax. His intellect, subconscious mind and hands created the world
of boneless, flowing, amorphous creatures, which freely change their
shapes and position in the space and universe. Figures and objects, a
fish, an insect, a ladder, flames, stars, cones, circles and spheres,
all have real prototypes, but on the canvas are swinging colored shadows,
celebrating a holiday. As time progresses, Miro's pictures become increasingly
abstract, and his forms more organic. By the end of the 1920s Miro's
vocabulary of pictorial idioms is formed. There are signs, which mark
the space (a line of horizon, sun and stars in the upper part of a picture;
waves or bunches of plants in the lower part), and service signs, or
messengers, which communicate and unite the different parts of space:
a flying bird, a running rabbit, a ladder going into the sky, organs
of sensual perception, an eye and ear, a human figure with enormous
feet: Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird. 1926; Dog Barking at the Moon.
1926; Landscape (The Hare). 1927, etc.)
In
the 1930s the artist experimented with different materials. He made assemblages
from materials and objects that he found; he painted, drew and collaged
on paper, masonite, sandpaper, copper. In 1932-36 he created a series
of pictures after his sketches-collages. Cut out of catalogues and magazines,
machines and everyday objects, he arranged and glued them onto the paper,
those collages were used for future paintings; in his artistic compositions
all those technical parts and blocks turned into organic mildly shaped
forms, which remind of animal organs, human limbs, and embryos. Fulfilled
in bright colors, these works represent some of Miro's most abstract
works: Painting. 1933, Composition. 1933, Painting, 1933. After the outbreak
of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Miro returned to Paris and stayed
in France until 1940.
In
1937, Miro painted a large panel The Reaper for the Spanish Republican
pavilion at the Paris World Fair. The panel, which presented a Catalan
peasant, disappeared or was destroyed after the pavilion was disassembled.
One of the most important works of the period is Still Life with
Old Shoe. Everyday things (a bottle, a loaf of bread, an apple pierced
by a fox, and an old shoe) irradiate unreal light, making a simple
still life of everyday objects look like a scene from the Apocalypse.
In 1940, in Varengeville (Normandy), Miro starts a series of gouaches
Constellations, the work on which he continued in Montroig and Barcelona.
These 23 works became one of the highest points in his creativity.
Stars, moon scythes, discs, eyes, birds and animals, human figures,
some indefinite forms either come close together or leave the free
space. These gouaches were created, as Miro admits, under the influence
of night, stars, music of Bach and Mozart, which stirred up in him
multiple poetic associations reflected in titles: The Nightingale's
Song at Midnight and the Morning Rain. 1940. Ciphers and Constellations
in Love with a Woman; Constellation: Awakening at Dawn. 1941. etc.
In the 1940-70s the artist could realize his dream about monumental
art, which was a way of 'reaching people'.
In
1947 in the USA, he executed mural for Cincinnati Terrace Hilton
Hotel. In 1956, he settled in Palma de Majorca in a villa with a
large studio designed by friend, the architect Josep Lluis Sert.
Here, in collaboration with his old friend and a master ceramist
Josep Llorens Artigas he fulfilled the commission of two walls for
UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1956-58). The walls are 3 meters high
and 15 and 7.5 meters long. The dominant Sun Wall and the more intimate
Moon Wall with their bright colors make a sharp contrast to the gray
cement of the buildings. For this work Miro was awarded the Guggenheim
International Award, which President Eisenhower handed over to him
in 1959.
The
following years Miro created a series of monumental ceramic murals,
which decorate the dining room in Harvard Harkness Center (1960-61),
building of the Ecole Suporieure de Sciences 'conomiques in St. Gall,
Switzerland (1964), fence of the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence,
the airport in Barcelona (1970), the Glass pavilion for the World
Fair in Osaka (1970) and others. In the 1950-70s Miro also got interested
in sculpture. Miro made models for sculpture out of materials he
found, man-made or natural; sometimes those models were later cast
in bronze. The paintings of this period became 'emptier' again: Woman
in Front of the Sun. 1950; Catalan Peasant in the Moonlight, 1968;
triptych Blue: Blue II, Blue III. 1961; The Lark's Wing. 1967. These
works can be characterized by the use of a few pure colors, big simple
forms, exceptional laconism in combination with the energy of poetic
expression.
Miro
produced a massive output. He left at least 2,000 oil paintings,
500 sculptures, 400 ceramic objects, and 5,000 drawings and collages.
He had an immense influence on post-war art in the United States.
In 1975 the Fundacio Joan Miro was opened in Centre d'Estudis d'Art
Contemporani, Barcelona. In 1992 the artist's studio in Palma de
Majorca was turned into his museum.
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1893-1983