1927: oil and gouache on canvas; 97.2 x 130.2 cm; Tate Gallery,London, England.
"Juan Miró trained in Barcelona at the School of Fine Art and the Academy Cali. His early work showed a diverse mixture of influences from Catalan art to Cézanne and the Fauves. In 1920, he settled in Paris where he was inspired by his Spanish compatriots, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris. During the 1920's his poetic and primitive style was strengthened by a close association with the Surrealists. He signed their manifeto in 1924 and contributed to their exhibitions, sharing their determination to liberate on canvas the unconscious mind from logic and reason. His playful, emblematic Painting 1927 makes use of simplified semi-abstract forms sparsley dotted on a single, flat blue ground. This minimal composition of lines, shpaes, signs and dots of colour recalls prehistoric cave paintings. The lurid background to the work appears to have been painted with the water-soluble blue pain often used on the outside of house in Spain and Portugal. In the 1940, Miró returned to Spain, where he lived mainly in Majorca. He produced ceramics in the 1950's, worked on murals in the USA and ceramic wall decorations in Paris. His highly personal, mythological imagery inspired American artists such as Arshile Gorky and Alexander Calder. "
