''Head of a Catalan Peasant'' is an emblematic sequence of oil paintings and pencil made by
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
between 1924 and 1925. Miró began this series the same year that
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
published his ''
Manifesto of Surrealism''. The series was made partly in Paris. For Joan Miró "a
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...
" symbolized rural knowledge, and also reflected his
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
identity.
The
Fundació Joan Miró of Barcelona keeps several preparatory drawings for this series.
The work demonstrates that Miró had ties with his homeland throughout his career. Joan Miró created this series in response to the prohibition of the
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
language by
Miguel Primo de Rivera. He was also influenced by the rural environment of
Baix Camp. In this series he further develops the language started in works such as ''
Catalan Landscape (The Hunter)''. The sequence followed by Miró has been interpreted several times as a progressive simplification of the same scene.
Christopher Green, in turn, says that this is not exactly a linear trend toward simplification, but rather a dilemma, an internal discussion between the artist which creates the filled pictorial space.
Description
The series shares the synthetic representation of the figure of a Catalan
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...
, by a repetition of symbols such as the triangular head, the
beard and red
hat (called ''
Barretina
A barretina (; plural: ''barretines'', diminutive of ''barret'' "cap") is a traditional hat that was frequently worn by men in parts of the Christian cultures of the Mediterranean Sea such as Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Isla ...
''), all combined in one pole figure. In this group of oil paintings, Miró outlines the figure of a farmer several times, working with neutral background blue or yellow. As said Margit Rowell, Joan Miró explained his intentions with this work:
Series
''Head of a Catalan Peasant'' (1924)
This first version of the Catalan Peasant was painted in 1924 and is now part of the permanent collection of the
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
It became part of the collection as a ''gift'' of the ''Collectors Committee'' of the institution. The work is signed at lower right: Miró / 1924. The back of the work is signed Joan Miró, ''Tête de Paysan Catalan'', 1924.
Exhibitions
''Head of a Catalan Peasant''
Is the most unknown of the series, which belongs to a private collector, but has been seen in several exhibitions:
Exhibitions
''Catalan peasant with guitar''
This work demonstrates the process of synthesis that Miró began using in his compositions later in his trip to France in the early 20s, after coming into contact with the Surrealists and Dadaists. Miró began to create his own sign language. In this version of the series, you can see the farmer's body with a hat on an intense blue background.
''Head of a Catalan Peasant'' (10 March 1925)
The version preserved in Edinburgh is the third of four ''Catalan Peasants'' that Miró made. You can understand this painting as a ''
self-portrait
A self-portrait is a representation of an artist that is drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by that artist. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century tha ...
'' of Miró, which affirms his
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
identity. The work, conducted in 1925, was made at a time when Miró was gradually moving away from
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
. Previously the work had been part of
private collection
A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...
of
Roland Penrose. Currently the work is preserved in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It was acquired along with the help of
the Art Fund
Art Fund (formerly the National Art Collections Fund) is an independent membership-based British charitable organization, charity, which raises funds to aid the acquisition of artworks for the nation. It gives grants and acts as a channel for man ...
, the Friends of the
Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
and the ''Knapping Fund'' 1999.
''Head of a Catalan Peasant'' 1925
This version is kept in
Moderna Museet
Moderna Museet ("the Museum of Modern Art"), Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened a new branch in Malmö in t ...
, Stockholm. It joined the museum with the registration number MOM 445, in the legacy of Gerard Bonnier in 1989. He had previously been owned by Jacques Viot, Galerie Pierre (Loeb), Private Samling, Marcel Mabille and Svensk-Fransk Konstgalleriet.
This version is one of the synthetic series, dominated by a blue a bit more intense than in the rest of the works. You can also see a black cross, surmounted by a small hat. The space is decorated with a pair of stars, one white and one black.
References
Further reading
*
*
* Kramer, Hilton. "Modern Art at the National Gallery." ''The New Criterion'' 7, no. 8 (April 1989): 3. 1989
*
* Dupin, Jacques. ''Miró''. New York, 1962: 162, 166. 1962
{{Joan Miró
1925 paintings
Paintings by Joan Miró
Collections of the National Gallery of Art