Femmes, homme 1931

Joan Miró painted this in 1931, with what looks like oil on canvas, and you can see in his approach to mark making a freedom, a real sense of joy and exploration. Look at the surface of the painting, where Miró has built up these layers of texture, creating a kind of topographical map of the canvas. The paint application varies from thin washes to thicker impasto, creating a rich and complex surface. Take, for example, the yellow area in the lower left, where the paint is applied in a way that feels both deliberate and accidental, and consider the black line which delicately curves around, giving definition to the plane. Miró’s work reminds me of Paul Klee, in the way that he reduces forms to these elemental, almost childlike shapes, suggesting that art is not about perfection, but about embracing the playful and the ambiguous.