L’échelle

Executed in the autumn of 1938, L’échelle illustrates Joan Miró’s renewed dedication to powerful, supple linear forms in his work while living in exile in Paris during the Spanish Civil War. The previous year, Miró had taken the unusual step of returning to life-drawing classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, joining students that were more than half his age, where he made a series of highly inventive drawings of the nude form inspired by the live modelling sessions. As a result, his adroitness with line, always an essential element of his work, grew more assured and prominent in his ensuing paintings and drawings, with mysterious figures, creatures and signs appearing in clearly delineated, graphic silhouettes. In L’échelle, flexible, fluid lines of pencil dance across a highly textured, impastoed white ground, conjuring a trio of biomorphic, fantastical characters, who appear to be consumed by panic as they flee towards the small ladder that stands nearby. While the ladder was an oft-repeated motif in Miró’s oeuvre from the 1920s onwards, representing an escape from everyday reality and modes of thinking, the subject took on a new, more urgent meaning in the turbulent years of the late 1930s, as the artist faced the inexorable encroachment of suffering, conflict and darkness then sweeping across Europe. Throwing their arms expressively outwards, their expressions bewildered and shocked, the three characters in L’échelle embody the anxiety and alarm of ordinary citizens caught in the conflict. Gesticulating towards the ladder, the central figure directs his companions to their escape route, the rungs of the ladder leading upwards towards a burst of soft blue pigment, that suggests the promise of colour, life and hope in the place beyond.