Woman and Bird

Joan Miro produced a number of paintings over a short period of just a few months in which he focused specifically on the theme of women and birds. All feature much the same style, with other examples including Woman and Birds in the Night and Woman and Birds.

Woman and Bird features several figures set within a myriad of black lines, some of which create spaces in which bright colours are then added. The thicker lines leave a bolder impression, and Miro himself only adds red and green touches alongside the dominant black. The background is white, with variations in tone to give a natural, organic feel and the piece is then attached to a black board, the border of which shows through around the very edges of the artwork. We see a small star delivered with intersecting lines which denotes elements of the sky in a manner that is found many times within this artist's career. The whole piece feels expressive and free, where Miro does not attempt to recreate something perfectly as it appears in real life, but rather create a new form all of his own. The eye in the top right hand side corner is perhaps the most memorable part of this abstract work.

The artist produced so many different versions of the woman and bird theme that it is actually quite difficult to locate much information on any of the individual iterations. Perhaps the most famous version was Dona i Ocell, or Woman and Birds, which was a huge sculpture that can still be viewed today. The painting displayed in this page is dated at 1967, and we do know that the artist worked in this style many times during the 1960s. The related artworks mentioned elsewhere in this article would also presumably have been painted at around the same time, potentially in the same year, such is the similarity in style and content between them all. It is the balance of form and colour that makes items such as this so instantly recognisable as from the career of Miro.

Many will think of cave paintings from pre-historic times when they look at this series of work by Miro. The lines and shapes are undeniably influenced by those ancient times, and this artist loved to be able to produce modern art by actually making use of styles that had a connection to the earliest of human art. It was therefore quite a strange combination, of innovation and re-use, of groundbreaking art whilst taking us back in time. Many artists have worked in this way, and it was also his handling of colour that made his approach so impactful and popular. Today Miro is rightly regarded as one of the most important artists of the 20th century, with any artwork from his hand instantly achieving huge valuations at auction. As a productive artist there is a good mix of his work across major institutions in the US and Europe, as well as some others in private collections too.