Painting (1953)

The first thing that strikes us about this painting from 1953 is its similarity to a homage to Barcelona FC, which came about two decades later.

The colours in the shape at the foot of the painting match those of the famous Catalan football club. There are also the abstract lines and forms too, but these are consistent throughout his abstract period. Here in this 1953 artwork we have a plethora of heads, as indicated by their eyes, though each are on their side, as if the figures are leaning over. The multitude of thick lines may well signify limbs, just as they have done elsewhere in his career. Miro then uses small circles to dot around these larger shapes which adds aesthetic interest and also reminds us a little of pre-historic cave paintings, which we know he was a huge follower of. At the top we find a star, which he would always produce using crossed lines with a common central point.

The artwork was left untitled, and so we have had to categorise it by medium and year. There were a number of these within his career, as well as with several other artists from the 20th century. We find a large number of untitled paintings from Mark Rothko, for example. Abstract art can be harder to title artworks, when sometimes it is literally just a selection of shapes, lines and colours. More traditional art could be a landscape depiction of a particular location or, alternatively, perhaps a commonly known religious theme, inspired by a passage of scripture. Modern art for this reason has been harder to document at times, but has the advantage of being more recent, so documentation and quotes from others are much easier to uncover.