Joan Miró
Peinture (Painting), 1926

From 1925 through 1927 Miró painted his “magnetic fields”: spare, monochromatic canvases inhabited by simple and often whimsical biomorphic shapes.

The lone form in this work beams across the empty, hazy space of the picture. The only spatial definition is provided by a dotted line, which connects one edge to the form and then extends upward. Spontaneous and intuitive, the smiling shape is tenuously tied to a rectangular base, its glazed grin lit by the half-shadowed moon.

The dreamlike atmosphere is a dramatic departure from Cubism into a world defined only by the imagination.

Audio Stories

Why is this figure smiling?

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NARRATOR:

Joan Miró explores the eerie connections between Earth and the cosmos in this 1926 work simply titled, Painting.

 

BISHOP:

On the left hand side is a figure that Miró would have called a personage.

 

NARRATOR:

Janet Bishop, Curator of Painting and Sculpture.

 

BISHOP:

The figure has a large white head, with tiny eyes and a big smile. In the upper right portion of the composition is a small circular form that seems to suggest a moon– perhaps a moon that’s partly in shadow, partly in light.

 

NARRATOR:

Notice how the smiling face is tied to the dark rectangle in the lower left. At the time he made this piece, the Spanish born Miró was aligned with the Surrealists, an international group of artists and writers based in Paris. Not surprisingly, the piece is rooted in personal, dreamlike imagery.

 

BISHOP:

He was very interested, as other Surrealists were, in freeing painting from logic and reason, and focused to a great extent on biomorphic forms that suggest human or animal life, but don’t imitate them directly.

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Artwork Info

Artwork title
Peinture (Painting)
Artist name
Joan Miró
Date created
1926
Classification
painting
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
28 7/8 × 36 1/4 in. (73.4 × 92.2 cm)
Date acquired
1980
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Gift of Joseph M. Bransten in memory of Ellen Hart Bransten
Copyright
© Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/80.428
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

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