For Emili Fernandez 1963

Joan Miró, at some point, made this painting for someone called Emili Fernandez with oil paint, probably on canvas. The first thing that strikes me is the color—these bright, flat primaries laid onto that chalky blue ground. There's a real childlike quality to the color choices, so simple, so direct. Miró had a way of making painting feel so immediate, like the work of a playful child with an advanced understanding of abstract form. Take that little red dot for an eye, for instance. It sits there, bold and unapologetic, surrounded by these meandering lines. It’s like he's saying, "Here is a painting. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be." It reminds me a little of Kandinsky, with that sense of pure, unburdened expression, but Miró’s got this groundedness, an earthiness, that’s all his own. It’s as though he looked at the world, simplified it, and then put it back together in a way that’s both familiar and utterly strange. And that’s the magic of painting, isn’t it? It’s never one thing, never fixed.