Group of Women
Joan Miró
JOAN MIRÓ, 1938. OIL ON CANVAS.
Abstract screams ring across a smoky landscape. Bright colors try to break through, being choked by darkness that swirl around them leaving only the ghost of their presence behind. The figures reveal little of their origin, anthropomorphic shapes that exist in a nether-world of nature, changing species with each observation – save for the unmistakable mouth of a human that forms the central focus of this work. She is a woman, and she screams towards the sky in desperation in agony as the bombs of the Spanish civil war fall around her. Picasso had revealed Guernica, his masterpiece in protest of the same war, the previous year, and the pose of Miró’s screaming women matches almost perfectly that of a horse in the right of Picasso’s work. An almost unclassifiable artist, Miró’s work veered between surrealism, fauvism, and expressionism but remained always uniquely his own. Often childlike and plumbing the depths of his subconscious, this work oozes with a tragedy and darkness quite unusual for the artist known for his playful, witty works.