Object number1993.20
Painting (Birds, Personages, and Blue Star)
Date1950
Artist
Joan Miró
(Spanish, 1893-1983)
MediumOil and casein on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 51 1/2 x 38 3/4 in. (130.81 x 98.43 cm)
Framed: 54 7/8 x 41 5/8 x 2 in. (139.38 x 105.73 x 5.08 cm)
Framed: 54 7/8 x 41 5/8 x 2 in. (139.38 x 105.73 x 5.08 cm)
Credit LineGift from the collection of Katherine Sanford Deutsch, class of 1940
On View
On viewPeriod20th c
Classification(s)
Albertina, Vienna, Austria, Albertina Museum, “Miro: From the Earth to the Sky,” September 12, 2014 – January 11, 2015. Cat. p. 163, repr.;
Label TextPainted in Barcelona and dated 17 March 1950, this excellent example of Miró’s mature period of Surrealist and biomorphic forms is one of what is known as his ‘slow’ paintings from 1949/50, more planned compositions than his complementary ‘spontaneous’ paintings from the same years. Like several other works collected by Katherine Sanford Deutsch, this painting was sold to the collector by Pierre Matisse. The work is painted on raw, unprimed canvas and forms a capricious assemblage of lighthearted Surrealist hieroglyphs in an antic display. Its naïveté and dependence on the primitivism of prehistoric cave paintings such as those in Altamira, Spain, link Miró in a spiritual and familiar manner with the indigenous traditions of Iberia. Miró was once quoted as stating that all art degenerated after that of the cave dwellers. Some critics are uncomfortable with too much emphasis on these attributes of Miró’s art, and stress that he was also affected by both the political unrest of Spain and Europe in the mid-twentieth century as well as by the overheated intellectual environment he encountered during his residence in Paris at the time of the Spanish Civil War.
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