Peinture (Escargot, femme, fleur, étoile) (Painting [Snail, Woman, Flower, Star])

Joan Miró

Barcelona, Spain, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 1983
  • Date: 
    1934
  • Technique: 
    Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 
    195 x 172 cm
  • Category: 
    Painting
  • Entry date: 
    1992
  • Register number: 
    DE00117
  • Donation of Pilar Juncosa, 1986

Despite his deliberately transgressive experiments of the late 1920s, Joan Miró never abandoned painting completely. He returned to it in a major way in 1935, with a group of works that he dubbed “savage paintings”, which came about in the face of the growth of fascism and the pre-war climate in Spain. The artist’s preoccupied and anguished state of mind was already becoming obvious as early as 1934 in his compositions depicting monstrous, grotesque figures, which showed his anxiety as much by his use of intense, acidic colours as by the characters’ deformities. The feeling of joy and magic in previous pictures has now turned into gravity and drama.
Peinture (Escargot, femme, fleur, étoile) (Painting [Snail, Woman, Flower, Star]) combines Miró's characteristic linear graphics with a series of powerful coloured patches. The various Surreal-looking figures are all part of a process of imminent metamorphosis, yet their deformed limbs are in stark contrast to the lyricism and poetry of the written words introduced into the picture as part of the composition, which give the painting its name.

Paloma Esteban Leal

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