The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers

This complex painting by Joan Miro was completed in 1941 and was a part of his highly regarded Constellations series. It is one of a number of paintings by the artist to now be owned by MoMA, in the US.

The artist's constellation series was produced using a combination of gouache, oil wash, and charcoal on paper, meaning some actually class these as a collection of mixed media drawings. Miro was going through a tough time in his life during this period and perhaps the frantic nature of this work highlights his problems in a visual form. There may also have been an issue with sourcing certain artistic materials right across the early 1940s, meaning Miro may have adapted his working processes based on what items he could actually get hold of at the time. For any artist in Europe, this was a horrendous time and much of what was going on would feature and inspire some particularly dark and depressing artworks. For Miro himself, it was the combination of the Spanish Civil War and World War II that left a strong but negative impact on his overall mindset, forcing an alternative body of work which stretched right across this turbulent period.

Within this artwork, Miro attempts to connect with nature as a direct result of trying to avoid the horrors of humanity, as he saw the events of the day. The artist adds many elements in small abstract shapes, some of which can be easily identified, whilst others are a little harder to identify. We can see the tiger like creature to the right hand side, as well as a large number of different eyes which are placed all around the piece. There is a gradiented background with shapes then produced over the top in black, green and red. They are filled with solid tones, leaving a bold and highly contemporary finish. The artist produced these designs whilst living in Normandy and at the time was purposely attempting to distance himself from citylife, which was now filled with danger and stress.

MoMA offers one of the finest permanent collections in the world, with a focus most on 20th century art, with also some notable artists from the preceding 50 years which includes the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist eras. There are many hundreds of thousands of items within their collection, which is far too much to be able to put on display all at the same time. Thankfully, Miro's career is highly significant and so his paintings tend to be viewable most of the time. Other items that you might be interested in seeing during a visit here include Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory, René Magritte's False Mirror, Frida Kahlo's Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair and also Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Most major names from European and American art from around the mid-19th century up to the late 20th century will be featured here, making it one of the must-visit galleries to be found across the world.