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Lot Essay
The present work is part of a large group of works by Joan Miró called the wild or savage paintings and which were executed between 1934 and 1938. From 1934 onwards a furious mechanism leads Miró from the creation of balanced and detailed compositions to increasingly violent compositions where uncontrollable monsters appear with which the artist himself seems to be fighting over the surface of the canvases. Nothing in the life of the artist nor in the public life of Spain until 1936 explains this explosion of aggressiveness and the appearance of these violent and sexually charged monsters. It is rather as if Miró had a foreboding of what lay ahead namely the Civil War.
Peinture is more precisely part of a group of 27 paintings on masonite that were executed by Miró during the terrible summer of 1936. During that summer "Franco landed at Tetuan, and the army rose up against the Spanish Republic. The monstruous Civil War began. Miró was taken by surprise on his farm at Montroig, the place that had inspired his most powerful visionary works. The shock of it crushed him, left him inconsolable. And yet, for the past two years his work had been seething with monsters, as if he had known of Spain's tragedy in advance. During this 'savage period', as he later called it, his work underwent a radical transformation. Space was thrown into confusion, colours were altered, figures were grotesquely deformed. A poetic universe had been struck with terror, and it was no longer recognisable."(J. Dupin, Solomon R. Guggenheim Exh. Catalogue, Joan Miró: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p.41).
In the paintings on masonite the violence increases. The present work is a testimony of the breaking down of monstruous forms that took place in 1936. Miró now seems to be denying birth to the monsters by driving his work towards abstraction. The hard panels have been chosen in order to resist and sustain Miró's own expressive violence. He projects raw colour, black ripolin signs, melting tar and sand onto the hard surface as a volcano would onto a dry land of compressed soil and straw. Form almost disappears in this process leaving behind a few embryonic and elementary forms. These works seem to prefigure what came after the war such as action painting and tachisme.
Peinture is more precisely part of a group of 27 paintings on masonite that were executed by Miró during the terrible summer of 1936. During that summer "Franco landed at Tetuan, and the army rose up against the Spanish Republic. The monstruous Civil War began. Miró was taken by surprise on his farm at Montroig, the place that had inspired his most powerful visionary works. The shock of it crushed him, left him inconsolable. And yet, for the past two years his work had been seething with monsters, as if he had known of Spain's tragedy in advance. During this 'savage period', as he later called it, his work underwent a radical transformation. Space was thrown into confusion, colours were altered, figures were grotesquely deformed. A poetic universe had been struck with terror, and it was no longer recognisable."(J. Dupin, Solomon R. Guggenheim Exh. Catalogue, Joan Miró: A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p.41).
In the paintings on masonite the violence increases. The present work is a testimony of the breaking down of monstruous forms that took place in 1936. Miró now seems to be denying birth to the monsters by driving his work towards abstraction. The hard panels have been chosen in order to resist and sustain Miró's own expressive violence. He projects raw colour, black ripolin signs, melting tar and sand onto the hard surface as a volcano would onto a dry land of compressed soil and straw. Form almost disappears in this process leaving behind a few embryonic and elementary forms. These works seem to prefigure what came after the war such as action painting and tachisme.