Plowed earth
| Plowed earth |
|---|
| Joan Miró , 1923/24 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 66 × 92.7 cm |
|
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , New York City
Link to the picture |
Plowed earth (French: La terre laborée , Catalan: Terra llaurada ) is a painting from the early work of Joan Miró , which he painted in Catalonia in 1923/24. It is considered a key work of the painter, who thus finally turns away from the representation of reality. In doing so, Miró found a new imagery that translates observation of nature into a system of colors and symbols.
background
After Miró's move to Paris in 1921 and his return to Mont-roig del Camp, he soon painted numerous key works that represent a turning point in his work; the actual break with the realistic representation that he still pursued in Der Tisch (Still Life with Rabbits) (1920), The Farm (1921/22) and in The Carbide Lamp (1922/23) then takes place in the summer of 1923 with pictures like plowed Earth and Pastorals . Using Juan Gris' deductive method , Miró assumes formal design elements.
Plowed earth "is a prime example" of how Joan Miró began to break away from representational representations - for example in Der Bauernhof (1921) - "and let increasingly surrealistic, dreamlike elements flow into his works". Miró “takes individual elements such as the house, the tree or the animals out of the landscape and reassembles them, making his composition into a symbolic image. But he also adds surrealistic motifs like the eye and ear on the tree. The ear occupies a central place. ”The plowed earth itself results in a parallel ornament in the foreground, cut off and bordered on the canvas by a tree-like structure.
While working on the painting Miró wrote “I tried to flee to the absolute of nature.” Plowed earth is a poetic metaphor that expresses Miró's idyllic understanding of his homeland, where, as he says, he “does not understand the wrongdoing of humanity” could. The painting's complex iconography has intertwined roots and points to Miró's longstanding interest in his artistic origins. The coloring of the picture refers to Romanesque Catalan frescoes , while the room arrangement is influenced by medieval Spanish wallpaper fabrics. The living creatures in the picture are reminiscent of Catalan ceramics that Miró collected and kept in his studio. The stylized figure with the plow has its origins in prehistoric cave paintings of Altamira , which Miró was well known. Miró experienced something living and magical in everything around him; the gigantic ear attached to a tree trunk, for example, reflected his idea that every object has a living soul.
If one compares the pictures Plowed Earth and the simultaneously created Catalan landscape (The Hunter) , "Miró arranges and repeats his forms and thereby changes their meaning." The artist's work has thus developed even further in the direction of Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia . “ Less is more , was the credo of an entire generation of architects and artists who aimed for clarity and impact,” wrote Janis Mink.
Provenance
The painting Plowed Earth is now in the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York.
literature
- Janis Mink: Miró . Cologne, bags. 1993
Individual evidence
- ↑ Art treasures in Switzerland: Hundreds of masterpieces of painting, sculpture and applied arts in public, ecclesiastical and private collections in Switzerland, selected and commented on by Manuel Gasser, Willy Rotzler, Christoph Bernoulli. Zurich: Manesse, 1964
- ↑ Joan Miró at Klassik 20cent ( memento of the original from March 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Joan Miró, Peter A. Ade, Hypo-Kulturstiftung: Joan Miró, sculptures . Kunsthalle, Maeght Hirmer Foundation, 1990
- ↑ Enrique Juncosca: Joan Miró in Ibiza (pdf)
- ↑ Wolfgang L. Angerstein: The human ear in the mirror of art . In: Language and Music: Contributions to the 71st annual conference of the German Society for Speech and Voice Medicine , ed. by Johannes Pahn. 2000, p. 46
- ^ Hans Platschek : Joan Miró: with self-testimonies and image documents . Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1993, p. 51
- ↑ a b c Plowed earth near Guggenheim
- ^ Janis Mink: Miró . Cologne, bags. 1993, p. 39
- ↑ Plowed earth at the Guggenheim Museum
