Painting (1950)

The explosion of colour found in this Joan Miro painting from 1950 makes it an exciting and expressive abstract piece that might remind some of the paintings of Pollock and Kandinsky.

Artist Miro experimented frequently throughout his career, both in terms of style but also the materials that he used. There are all sorts of materials used here as he attempted to move beyond just oil paints. He would also produce ceramics and sculptures, and so it is not surprising that he also made use of other elements alongside his oil forms. There is a really frenetic look to this painting, gone are the clearly defined forms of some of his other pieces, here everything is related with its neighbouring content, often overlapping or interacting with each other. Even the background is a little more contrasting than normal, with elements of red and brown appearing through the brown haze.

There are some clearer items, though, with lines used to form his usual matrixes of colour, though these are lost within the overall madness, and can only be spotted once you have taken a second or third look at this complex piece. It can also be hard to understand the structure and balance of this painting, where Miro deliberately gives an equal prominence across the canvas, whilst at other times he would indicate the focal point much more clearly. The result of all of this is another alternative style in his oeuvre, that some will love and others will see more as an interesting experiment which is not their favoured work within an extensive career.

There are ropes and cords hung from this canvas and those are the elements that would immediately catch your eye if viewing the painting in person. It is believed that this type of mixed media had not really been seen before and that it would not be for several decades before this approach to mixed media would start to appear more regularly. Miro was always at the forefront of new ideas. He had previously used ladders within his work, or at least painted versions of them, and perhaps the theme was related to that, but with a desire to provide a tactile, third dimension to his work for the first time, leading the way to his work with sculpture.