MIRÓ
1893–1983 • SURREALISM, AUTOMATISM
Potato
1928 OIL ON CANVAS
101 × 81.6 CM (39¾ × 32 IN)
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, US
Drawing on automatism, whereby artists allowed their subconscious minds to take over, Miró developed a style that sprang from his own feelings. Here a billowing white female figure attached to a red post stretches her arms above a potato field, as various objects float by.
Closely associated with Surrealism, Joan Miró i Ferrà invented a vocabulary of signs and symbols to free the unconscious mind. His work subsequently influenced graphic design of the late 20th century.
The son of a goldsmith and clockmaker, Miró was born near Barcelona in Spain. He took drawing lessons from the age of seven, but later also took business classes while studying art at the Lonja School of Fine Art. After a brief period working as a bookkeeper, he fell ill and while convalescing at his parents’ farm in Catalonia, decided to devote himself to art.
For three years he studied at the Francisco Gali Academy in Barcelona, learning to integrate music and poetry into his art. Exhibitions of Impressionism, Fauvism, Primitivism and Cubism also influenced his early paintings. In 1920, he moved to Paris, where he met Picasso and Braque. To begin with, he painted realistic scenes inspired by Catalonian landscapes and everyday objects, but incorporating symbolism in the pictures. Then he began emulating some of Picasso’s and Braque’s Cubist paintings. Later, after he had met Kandinsky and Klee, he invented a colorful floating world of shapes. As he featured fewer elements in his work, in an effort to create stronger and more immediate impact, he said: “Emptiness becomes increasingly important in my pictures.” His work became full of dreamlike images—inspired by the hallucinations he had when he went to sleep hungry. In 1924, he met André Breton (1896–1966), Paul Éluard (1895–1952) and other Surrealists. The colorful shapes, flattened planes and sharp lines he featured in his paintings suggest many different interpretations, but he rejected membership of the Surrealist group, even though Breton described him as “the most Surrealist of us all.”
In giving his works bizarre titles, such as Blue II, Daybreak or The Birth of the World, he suggested even more ambiguous ideas. As a pioneer of automatism, he explored ways of expressing the subconscious, by painting and drawing “automatically,” deliberately without conscious thought. These drawings or paintings are believed to reveal underlying feelings that would otherwise be inhibited or suppressed by the conscious mind. In the late 1920s, his work became increasingly abstract and organic, incorporating symbols and shapes that expressed his anxieties during the build-up to the Spanish Civil War. Until then, he had returned to Spain each summer, but the war prevented this. At that time, he began experimenting with collage, and after World War II he returned to Spain, working prolifically, producing ceramics, murals, tapestry design and sculpture. His influence on post-war fine art and graphic design was immense.
Key Works
The Farm 1921–2, THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC, US
The Tilled Field 1923–4, THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK, US
Harlequin’s Carnival 1924–5, ALBRIGHT-KNOX ART GALLERY, BUFFALO, NEW YORK, US
Dog Barking at the Moon 1926, THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, PHILADELPHIA, PA, US
Composition 1933, KUNSTMUSEUM, BERN, SWITZERLAND
MAGRITTE
1898–1967 • SURREALISM, MAGICAL REALISM
The Human Condition
1933 OIL ON CANVAS
100 × 81 CM (39 × 31 IN)
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC, US
Magritte painted several versions of an easel in front of a window. Here, the easel holds a canvas of a landscape that looks identical to the landscape outside. But the view outside the window is real, while the painting on the easel is a representation of that reality. Or are they both part of one illusion?
One of the most imitated artists, Belgian painter René Magritte was a leading exponent of Surrealism. His highly individual, witty and thought-provoking images challenge viewers’ preconceptions, making them reconsider the world around them. Apart from a brief, more painterly period during World World II, he always worked in a precise, prosaic manner and remained true to Surrealism.
Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. Little is known about his childhood, but he started drawing lessons at the age of 12. Two years later, his mother drowned herself in a nearby river. It is thought that Magritte’s visions of his mother’s body floating on the river with her dress obscuring her face influenced several of his paintings of people with cloth over their heads, although he always denied this.
From the age of 18, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. After graduating, he became a wallpaper designer and commercial artist, painting in his spare time in a Cubist-Futurist style. After 1920, he discovered the works of Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) who, from about 1915, had been painting menacing cityscapes, which he called the “pittura metafisica,” meaning metaphysical art or dreamlike pictures. In 1925 Magritte assisted in the production of some Dadaist magazines with Jean Arp (1886–1966), Francis Picabia (1879–1953), Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948), Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) and Man Ray (1890–1976). In 1926 his individual style emerged, with his disconcerting paintings The Lost Jockey and The Menaced Assassin. In these he explored how paintings can create a sense of mystery. After a poor reception from his first solo exhibition in Brussels in 1927, Magritte moved to Paris and joined the Surrealists. Although the other Surrealists believed that Sigmund Freud’s book The Interpretation of Dreams explained the subconscious mind, Magritte felt that psychoanalysis could never provide all the answers to the mysteries of the universe. His paintings were not dream narratives, but with their odd juxtapositions, they focused on the mystery of existence and developments of thoughts.
Magritte’s painting style hardly changed. Using thick, smooth paint and clean lines, his work offers paradoxes—it looks real, but it is unreal at the same time. Exploring issues of visual perception and illusion, he used ambiguous or metaphorical symbols such as mirrors, eyes, windows, curtains and pictures within pictures. In 1930, having made little impact in Paris, he returned to Brussels and to his advertising career, although he carried on painting in his spare time. During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, he remained in Brussels and briefly adopted a more colorful, painterly style in opposition to the oppressive political situation. After the war, he produced forgeries of Picasso, Braque and de Chirico paintings. At the end of 1948, he returned to his original pre-war methodical and meticulous style. In 1965 he visited the US for a retrospective of his work.
Key Works
The Reckless Sleeper 1927, TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK
La Durée Poignardée 1938, ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, IL, US
Perspective II: Manet’s Balcony 1950, MUSEUM VAN HEDENDAAGSE KUNST, GHENT, BELGIUM
Gonconda 1953, THE MENIL COLLECTION, HOUSTON, TX, US
The Empire of Lights 1954, MUSÉES ROYAUX DES BEAUX-ARTS, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
GIACOMETTI
1901–1966 • SURREALISM, FORMALISM, EXPRESSIONISM