The Birth of Day

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The Birth of Day came towards the end of Miro's career in 1968. It is a beautifully simplistic artwork featuring a limited palette and bold, thick lines.

Towards the end of his career the artist would often create minimalist portraits such as this, where figures were reduced to the smallest of details, something akin to a cartoon. His Catalan background in which bright colours are encouraged can be seen within The Birth of Day, which itself makes use of tones such as blue, green, yellow and red which are separated by bold black lines which skillfully create the figure form. The artist purposely avoids revealing too much about the individual in front of us and works quickly on this painting. Miro finishes with some quick flourishes either side of the person, helping to indicate elements of the sky which presumably appeared just over their shoulder. The most obvious of these is the star shape scrawled on the left hand side and this was a symbol that the artist used many times within his constellations series some years earlier.

The artist was able to create styles and signature languages which could then be replicated across a variety of different mediums. His abstract colours and shapes therefore would cut across drawings, paintings and then into ceramics too. He loved to work in this manner and it was inspired by his life in Spain followed by his relationships with other artists, as well as his own personal ideas. He liked to evolve throughout his lifetime and never sought to settle on his success, even when finding a way that proved popular. Miro's main driver was his creative expression, and that is why he initially embarked on such a modern approach, when he was actually already skilled in more traditional methods which might have helped him achieve success more easily. Integrity and self expression therefore trumped comfort and monetary gain, even though he would eventually become very famous towards the end of his career.

Miro went on a path of discovery, becoming more and more abstract as his career developed, eventually spreading across into other mediums as he desired experimentation and evolution over a simpler life. Despite the changes that he made, most of his work from across his career can immediately be identified as his own, with a strong theme running throughout, even whilst he altered the level of abstaction that he used. Another painter who went on a similar path was Piet Mondrian, a Dutch artist who initially worked in an expressive manner before eventually reducing his forms down to simple squares of primary colours, giving us the likes of Broadway Boogie Woogie, Victory Boogie Woogie and Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow.