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Lot Essay
After the prosperity and freedom of the 1920s, the subsequent decade in Europe grew more ominous with each passing year. As national economies declined, the remedies proposed by fascism seemed increasingly appealing to many, and the liberal intelligentsia was everywhere on the defensive. Miró could have hid behind his own success, and in fact he was spending more time in his farm at Montroig and was less frequently seen in Paris. His career was on a steady track--in 1935 there were exhibitions of his work in Brussels, Tenerife and Prague--and his private and family life was settled and harmonious. Miró was nevertheless attuned to the political and social currents around him, and in a series of pastels done in summer 1934 he suddenly evoked a new and startling sense of menace. These were the first of a series of works done over the next four years which the artist himself called his 'savage paintings.'
From the very beginning of 1935, no matter what Miró set out to do, his brush conjured nothing but monsters. The monstrous was everywhere he looked; it occupied his whole field of vision and sensation. It was a prophetic warning of universal cataclysm, and it was also a sort of exorcism on the artist's part. While he was perhaps not capable of averting the danger, at least he could face it head on, with strength and lucidity born of despair. The marvelous becomes fantastic terror, the dream a clairvoyant nightmare, lyricism a barbaric hymn (J. Dupin, Miró, New York, 1993, p. 189).
The present work incorporates the strange mixture of comic grotesquerie and sinister prophecy that characterizes many paintings of this period. The personnage in the present work is clearly male, with his genitalia and pubic hair visible in the lower part of the picture, below his navel and a fold of skin. He holds a small creature, either a animal or a child, in front of him, which he appears to threaten. This image recalls the famous painting of Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring his Children, painted in 1821-1823 (coll. Museo del Prado, Madrid). Commentators have interpreted Goya's gruesome painting as a protest against reactionary and self-destructive forces in Spanish society. When Miró painted the present work, Spain was in political turmoil--civil war would consume the nation less than a year later-and he no doubt understood the renewed relevance of Goya's visionary picture.
The gouaches done in the summer of 1935 have shown us how Miró was sometimes surprised and overwhelmed by the images of terror that pursued him. We saw, too, how sometimes he succeeded, by force of will or trickery, to drive them away or otherwise get free of them. He had not accepted their intrusion as an irresistible fatality, still less as a possible means of salvation. In the end, however, the monsters defeated him; they came to stay. In the fall of 1935 he realized that he would be able to free himself from them, if ever, only by putting all his resources at their disposal--his palette, his line, his sensibility, and his intelligence. (ibid., p. 199)
From the very beginning of 1935, no matter what Miró set out to do, his brush conjured nothing but monsters. The monstrous was everywhere he looked; it occupied his whole field of vision and sensation. It was a prophetic warning of universal cataclysm, and it was also a sort of exorcism on the artist's part. While he was perhaps not capable of averting the danger, at least he could face it head on, with strength and lucidity born of despair. The marvelous becomes fantastic terror, the dream a clairvoyant nightmare, lyricism a barbaric hymn (J. Dupin, Miró, New York, 1993, p. 189).
The present work incorporates the strange mixture of comic grotesquerie and sinister prophecy that characterizes many paintings of this period. The personnage in the present work is clearly male, with his genitalia and pubic hair visible in the lower part of the picture, below his navel and a fold of skin. He holds a small creature, either a animal or a child, in front of him, which he appears to threaten. This image recalls the famous painting of Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring his Children, painted in 1821-1823 (coll. Museo del Prado, Madrid). Commentators have interpreted Goya's gruesome painting as a protest against reactionary and self-destructive forces in Spanish society. When Miró painted the present work, Spain was in political turmoil--civil war would consume the nation less than a year later-and he no doubt understood the renewed relevance of Goya's visionary picture.
The gouaches done in the summer of 1935 have shown us how Miró was sometimes surprised and overwhelmed by the images of terror that pursued him. We saw, too, how sometimes he succeeded, by force of will or trickery, to drive them away or otherwise get free of them. He had not accepted their intrusion as an irresistible fatality, still less as a possible means of salvation. In the end, however, the monsters defeated him; they came to stay. In the fall of 1935 he realized that he would be able to free himself from them, if ever, only by putting all his resources at their disposal--his palette, his line, his sensibility, and his intelligence. (ibid., p. 199)