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Constellations. Woman and birds
Joan (Joan) Miro • Painting, 1940, 38×46 cm
Description of the artwork «Constellations. Woman and birds»
Miro wrote a series of 23 paintings "The Constellations" in 1940-1941 in three different cities: Varanzhevile, Palma de Mallorca and Mont Roch. These were the most terrible, hopeless and difficult times for the artist. In 1936, he fled to Paris from Spain, when the civil war broke out there, and with the outbreak of World War II he moved to quiet Varanzheville. In 1940, German troops invaded France - and Miro again forced to flee. On the train from Varanzhevil to Paris, through the bombing and the roar of shells, Miro, his wife Pilar and ten-year-old daughter Dolores ride. Miro only has a portfolio with him, in which he takes 10 ready-made sheets with “Constellations” and empty sheets for new ones. The Miro family travels to Mallorca, in the hometown of Pilar.
In Palma, the artist writes another 10 “Constellations” and is preparing for the fact that he will have to spend the rest of his life here, walk on the sand, look at the sea and paint pictures that no one will ever see. Tired of moving, driven to despair, Miro is confident that Hitler will take over half the world and Nazism will win. And news of the war only strengthens this confidence.
He painted The Woman and the Birds a week before escaping from Varanzhevil. It was a time when in a small French town residents were forced to turn off the lights and curtain the windows to protect themselves from the bombing. Miro wrote: “I always liked to look out the window at night, watch the sky, stars, the moon, but now it was forbidden to us. Then I painted the windows blue, took out my brushes and started writing. This was the beginning of the "Constellations".
In “Woman and the Bird”, as well as in other works from the “Constellations” cycle, the viewer's eyes first stop at the colored figures: month, stars, eyes. To find the characters declared in the name, you have to look again, longer. These figures seem to be transparent, the sky is visible through them. They need to be found in the sky full of stars, and to draw imaginary lines, turning into a constellation. In search of a woman and birds, her eyes gradually find the desired trajectory and follow the black lines, curls. Like unraveling a ball of thread.
Miro uses very few colors for the basic elements of the picture: white, black, red, blue, yellow. But for a long time and carefully achieves the depth of the sky, mixing, spraying, rubbing gouache and oil against the background. The sky, which was not visible then behind its blue-painted windows, revived and replaced the present.
Author: Anna Sidelnikova
In Palma, the artist writes another 10 “Constellations” and is preparing for the fact that he will have to spend the rest of his life here, walk on the sand, look at the sea and paint pictures that no one will ever see. Tired of moving, driven to despair, Miro is confident that Hitler will take over half the world and Nazism will win. And news of the war only strengthens this confidence.
He painted The Woman and the Birds a week before escaping from Varanzhevil. It was a time when in a small French town residents were forced to turn off the lights and curtain the windows to protect themselves from the bombing. Miro wrote: “I always liked to look out the window at night, watch the sky, stars, the moon, but now it was forbidden to us. Then I painted the windows blue, took out my brushes and started writing. This was the beginning of the "Constellations".
In “Woman and the Bird”, as well as in other works from the “Constellations” cycle, the viewer's eyes first stop at the colored figures: month, stars, eyes. To find the characters declared in the name, you have to look again, longer. These figures seem to be transparent, the sky is visible through them. They need to be found in the sky full of stars, and to draw imaginary lines, turning into a constellation. In search of a woman and birds, her eyes gradually find the desired trajectory and follow the black lines, curls. Like unraveling a ball of thread.
Miro uses very few colors for the basic elements of the picture: white, black, red, blue, yellow. But for a long time and carefully achieves the depth of the sky, mixing, spraying, rubbing gouache and oil against the background. The sky, which was not visible then behind its blue-painted windows, revived and replaced the present.
Author: Anna Sidelnikova
