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Dear Friends,
We arrive today at the end of this Introduction to my forum on
the great art of the world. I must apologize for making it so
brief - only seven posts for what should be a wide panorama - that many great paintings and sculptures probably more
representatives have had to be left out. On the other
hand, we cannot compete with books, where more extensive studies
can be presented; and had I made it more comprehensive - hence more lengthy -,
some visitors might have become bored even before the
introductory part had ended.
In this last part of the Introduction we present
Awakening in the Early Morning,
fifteenth in a series of twenty-three gouache paintings known as
Constellations by Joan Miró,
the
Spanish
surrealist painter and sculptor (1893-1983).
For these
small works, Miró extended the playfully fantastical style that
he had invented in the 1920s in response to the art of children,
comic strips, and the madcap mosaics of Art Nouveau master
Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926), whose works before World War I had
transformed Miró's native Barcelona into one of the epicenters
of modern design. Teeming with weird, doodled creatures afloat
in fluid fields of color, the small Constellations evolved,
surprisingly, from Miró's aspirations in the late 1930s to work
on mural scale.
We always appreciate and welcome your good feedback.
Thank you,
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
GREAT MASTERS OF PAINTING
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Constellation:
Awakening in the Early Morning (1)
by
Joan Miró
(Gouache and oil wash on paper, 1941)
born April 20, 1893, Barcelona, Spain
died Dec. 25, 1983, Palma, Majorca, Spain
Profile (2)
Catalan painter who combined abstract art with
Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the
tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of
the harshness of modern life. He worked extensively in
lithography and produced numerous murals, tapestries, and
sculptures for public spaces.
Miró was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona and studied at the
Barcelona School of Fine Arts and the Academia Galí. His work
before 1920 shows wide-ranging influences. He moved to Paris in
1920, where, under the influence of surrealist poets and
writers, he evolved his mature style. Miró drew on memory,
fantasy, and the irrational to create works of art that are
visual analogues of surrealist poetry. These dreamlike visions,
such as Harlequin's Carnival (1925, Albright-Knox Gallery,
Buffalo) or Dutch Interior (1928, Museum of Modern Art, New York
City), often have a whimsical or humorous quality, containing
images of playfully distorted animal forms, twisted organic
shapes, and odd geometric constructions. The forms of his
paintings are organized against flat neutral backgrounds and are
painted in a limited range of bright colors, especially blue,
red, yellow, green, and black. Amorphous amoebic shapes
alternate with sharply drawn lines, spots, and curlicues, all
positioned on the canvas with seeming nonchalance. Miró later
produced highly generalized, ethereal works in which his organic
forms and figures are reduced to abstract spots, lines, and
bursts of colors.
Miró also experimented in a wide array of other media, devoting
himself to etchings and lithographs for several years in the
1950s and also working in watercolor, pastel, collage, and paint
on copper and masonite. His ceramic sculptures are especially
notable, in particular his two large ceramic murals for the
UNESCO building in Paris (Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun,
1957-59).
Technical data
(3)
Constellation: Awakening in the Early Morning
1941
fifteenth in a series of twenty-three small paintings known as
Constellations.
Gouache and oil wash on paper,
18-1/8 x
15 in. (46.0 x 38.0 cm)
Kimbell Art Museum
Fort Worth, Texas,
USA
Acquired in 1993
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