Woman and Birds in the Night 1968

Joan Miró made this painting, Woman and Birds in the Night, using a minimal palette to create an abstract landscape. What I like about the painting is the surface, it's almost like a wall, but porous, a canvas for shadows, like the paintings children make on sidewalks with chalk. Look at the large black shape at the lower right, the way the brushstrokes have a kind of raggedness, as if the paint was applied quickly and without too much premeditation. The process has been kept alive in the finished work. Then there's the bright red triangle at the lower left, which pulls your eye, its density contrasting with the delicacy of the black lines that surround it, that gives the work its energy. Miró's work always reminds me of Paul Klee who, like Miró, developed a unique language of abstract symbols and signs. It feels like both artists are speaking directly, and humorously, to the subconscious.