On View
Not on viewObject number2009.45
Plate IX, Album 13
Artist
Joan Miro
(Spanish, 1893-1983)
Date1948
Mediumlithograph
Dimensionsimage: 12 × 14 in. (30.5 × 35.6 cm)
sheet: 17 3/4 × 22 in. (45.1 × 55.9 cm)
mat: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm)
sheet: 17 3/4 × 22 in. (45.1 × 55.9 cm)
mat: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm)
Credit LineBequest of Charlotte Collins from the Charles and Charlotte Collins Collection
Exhibition History"A Passion for Collecting: Prints of the 1960s and '70s from the Collins Collection," KIA Galleries 2&5 (Nov. 13, 2010 - Jan. 2, 2011).
"Drawn to Abstraction," Charles H. MacNider Museum of Art, Mason City, IA (June 24 - August 20, 2016).
"Drawn to Abstraction," Sardoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA (August 25 - November 1, 2020).Label TextJoan Miró strips this print of color, emphasizing the playful quality of line identifiable throughout his work. The imagery is certainly abstract, yet the calligraphic marks in the foreground dare to be read as imagined Chinese characters or impish figures. A cluster of circular forms in the background are distinguished not by color but by their regular shape and soft-edged texture.
Miró is associated with Surrealism, a revolutionary European art movement that influenced American Abstract Expressionists. Both movements broke with pictorial traditions in search of more direct ways to present emotional truths. Surrealists’ dream-like imagery stripped objects of conventional meaning, which opened the door to increasingly abstract forms.
