Joy of a Little Girl in Front of the Sun

This piece from 1960 shows the artist at his most abstract and experimental. Joy of a Little Girl in Front of the Sun features huge swirls of paint, where the artist allows himself freedom of form.

This period was a time when artists sought new methods of production, where planning and detailing was less important, it was more about expression. Whilst we all know of Abstract Expressionists such as Pollock and Rothko, Miro had his own take on this. His career had been long established and so he felt entirely confident in this adapted approach which was stylistically very different to his work several decades earlier. We immediately spot the red sun, his trademark red circle which in this case is placed in the top right of the painting. It would never be perfectly round, for this was an expressive visualisation rather than an attempt for reality. We find these circles many times in his career and he also started to translate this visual language into other mediums too, having worked in ceramics and sculptures later in his career.

Miro uses a black background in order to allow his strokes of white and red to stand out as much as possible. The result is akin to a fireworks display, with brightness striking your eyes when viewing this painting. Some would have become concerned by his complete disregard of standard form by this point in his career, but with other artists following a similar path, many understood what he was doing rather than if he was moving in this direction alone. Having achieved so much already, he also had plenty of credit in the bank with regards the critics too, who allowed him greater patience than new artists would have been afforded.