EN
RO
Art

„The flood II”. Graphic model by Joan Miro

MNIR
C32
Contemporary History
1970
Gouache, pencil
Collage, letraset
H = 48 cm; W = 63,5 cm
MNIR
 
 
 
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    „The flood II”. Graphic model by Joan Miro

    Text: Cristina Gruescu

    Joan Miró is known as one of the most original artists of the 20th century. In his works, he showed a different world, which had not been represented before, using a diverse range of materials, shapes, and colors and having as sources of inspiration memory, fantasy, and the irrational. “Color, for Miró, is a matter that he uses to make magical costumes in which he dresses his characters and the objects of his fabulous universe as though for noisy incantations, warrior parades, bridal parties or sacrificial ceremonies” (according to the French art critic Maurice Raynal). Despite being a famous painter, his area of activity was not limited to painting, as he experimented with various graphic forms: engraving, lithography, collage, mural painting, ceramics and last, but not least, sculpture.

    He was born on 20 April 1893, in Barcelona, in a family of craftsmen, as his father was a jeweler and the grandfather from his mother’s side was a furniture manufacturer. Interested in drawing, he attended the courses of the Art School in his hometown, under the guidance of the painter Jose Pasco, who directed him to sculpture. After a depression, he enrolled in Francisco Gali’s workshop, where he painted with his eyes covered, in order to form his visual memory and the ability to recognize objects only by touching them. In his works, we can notice both the influence of impressionism in the manner of execution and that of Fauvism in the choice and use of colors for the note of expressivity. At the beginning of his career, he paints mainly landscapes (“Ciurana”), and his style is characterized by strong colors and cubist-like forms. After 1981, he changed his style, evolving in the direction of Surrealism and Dadaism (“The Harlequin’s Carnival”).

    He travels to France, where he meets Picasso, a Catalan like him, Tristan Tzara, Max Jacob and Ernest Hemingway. He begins to adopt an increasingly abstract style, for which he is famous nowadays, introducing in his paintings words, illustrated postcards, engravings, photographs, metals or strings, as elements integrated in the composition. In November 1925, Miró participated in the exhibition of Surrealist painters and took part in their working meetings, although he never joined this group officially. Nevertheless, he made several collages and began creating paintings with dreamlike and hallucinatory shapes. Although he always rejected his inclusion in any avant-garde movement manifested in his epoch, towards the end of his life he declared: “I am becoming more and more a surrealist”.

    The evolution of his work is complex, as, throughout his entire life, he looked for new possibilities of expression, in order to encode the real world by means of symbols and colors: “I am the opponent of any intellectual training meant for the dead design of the painting. The artist works like a poet: the word takes precedence, the idea follows”, the artist declared about his work.

    He died in Palma de Mallorca on 25 December 1983. In the last period of his artistic life he concentrated on the execution of monumental and public works and became increasingly interested in the symbol and its reflection in the work of art.

    It is a composition executed in gouache, which captures a painful event experienced by Romanians in the 1970s. In the creation of the art work, the painter uses the main tones in the chromatic range: red, yellow, and blue. These are the three colors in the flag of Romania and attract the empathy of the viewers. On a blue background, which suggests the idea of a flood, of water covering the earth, a red disk appears, on the left side of the painting, signifying the sun caught during a flood, whereas on the right side there is a yellow ellipsoidal shape with a red-eye in the center having a black dot in the middle. This eye can symbolize human beings, red being the color of panic and fear, and yellow symbolizing the hope of salvation. The “Man” is positioned above a black, elongated shape, the lifeboat, sketched at the bottom edge of the composition. The paintbrushes are thick and drawn in a circular manner.

    The work is dated and signed on the bottom edge: “pour le musée de Bucharest”, 24 / VIII / 70 JMiró. The inscription emphasizes the fact that the model represents a donation made by the artist to the Romanian state. Although from an artistic point of view, “The Flood” is a plastic composition, it receives the role of a model for the philatelic issue by attaching white paper collages with the inscriptions “ROMAN POST”, JOAN MIRÓ, in the black ink markings in the upper and lower part. The following philatelic pieces were based on it as a model: a stamp in a pair, a stamp in block of four and a block of five postage stamps plus a vignette containing the painter’s signature and the date of 24.VIII.70. All are heliogravures made on chrome paper. Another philatelic piece made after Joan Miró’s model is a strip that presents the theme of the painting, which on the cuff, at the bottom, also has the date of 24.VIII.70, the painter’s signature and the inscription “a thought of Joan Miró for the victim children in Romania”.

    A unique work signed by Joan Miró can be admired only at the National History Museum of Romania.

    Joan Miró is known as one of the most original artists of the 20th century. In his works, he showed a different world, which had not been represented before, using a diverse range of materials, shapes and colors and having as sources of inspiration memory, fantasy and the irrational. “Color, for Miró, is a matter that he uses to make magical costumes in which he dresses his characters and the objects of his fabulous universe as though for noisy incantations, warrior parades, bridal parties or sacrificial ceremonies” (according to the French art critic Maurice Raynal). Despite being a famous painter, his area of activity was not limited to painting, as he experimented with various graphic forms: engraving, lithography, collage, mural painting, ceramics and last, but not least, sculpture.
    He was born on 20 April 1893, in Barcelona, in a family of craftsmen, as his father was a jeweler and the grandfather from his mother’s side was a furniture manufacturer. Interested in drawing, he attended the courses of the Art School in his hometown, under the guidance of the painter Jose Pasco, who directed him to sculpture. After a depression, he enrolled in Francisco Gali’s workshop, where he painted with his eyes covered, in order to form his visual memory and the ability to recognize objects only by touching them. In his works, we can notice both the influence of impressionism in the manner of execution and that of Fauvism in the choice and use of colors for the note of expressivity. At the beginning of his career, he paints mainly landscapes (“Ciurana”), and his style is characterized by strong colors and cubist-like forms. After 1981, he changed his style, evolving in the direction of Surrealism and Dadaism (“The Harlequin’s Carnival”).
    He travels to France, where he meets Picasso, a Catalan like him, Tristan Tzara, Max Jacob and Ernest Hemingway. He begins to adopt an increasingly abstract style, for which he is famous nowadays, introducing in his paintings words, illustrated postcards, engravings, photographs, metals or strings, as elements integrated in the composition. In November 1925, Miró participated in the exhibition of Surrealist painters and took part in their working meetings, although he never joined this group officially. Nevertheless, he made several collages and began creating paintings with dreamlike and hallucinatory shapes. Although he always rejected his inclusion in any avant-garde movement manifested in his epoch, towards the end of his life he declared: “I am becoming more and more a surrealist”.
    The evolution of his work is complex, as, throughout his entire life, he looked for new possibilities of expression, in order to encode the real world by means of symbols and colors: “I am the opponent of any intellectual training meant for the dead design of the painting. The artist works like a poet: the word takes precedence, the idea follows”, the artist declared about his work.
    He died in Palma de Mallorca on 25 December 1983. In the last period of his artistic life he concentrated on the execution of monumental and public works and became increasingly interested in the symbol and its reflection in the work of art.
    It is a composition executed in gouache, which captures a painful event experienced by Romanians in the 1970s. In the creation of the art work, the painter uses the main tones in the chromatic range: red, yellow and blue. These are the three colors in the flag of Romania and attract the empathy of the viewers. On a blue background, which suggests the idea of flood, of water covering the earth, a red disk appears, on the left side of the painting, signifying the sun caught during a flood, whereas on the right side there is a yellow ellipsoidal shape with a red eye in the center having a black dot in the middle. This eye can symbolize human beings, red being the color of panic and fear, and yellow symbolizing the hope of salvation. The “Man” is positioned above a black, elongated shape, the lifeboat, sketched at the bottom edge of the composition. The paintbrushes are thick and drawn in a circular manner.
    The work is dated and signed on the bottom edge: “pour le musée de Bucharest”, 24 / VIII / 70 JMiró. The inscription emphasizes the fact that the model represents a donation made by the artist to the Romanian state. Although from an artistic point of view, “The Flood” is a plastic composition, it receives the role of a model for the philatelic issue by attaching white paper collages with the inscriptions “ROMAN POST”, JOAN MIRÓ, in the black ink markings in the upper and lower part. The following philatelic pieces were based on it as a model: a stamp in a pair, a stamp in block of four and a block of five postage stamps plus a vignette containing the painter’s signature and the date of 24.VIII.70. All are heliogravures made on chrome paper. Another philatelic piece made after the Joan Miró’s model is a strip that presents the theme of the painting, which on the cuff, at the bottom, also has the date of 24.VIII.70, the painter’s signature and the inscription “a thought of Joan Miró for the victim children in Romania”.
    A unique work signed by Joan Miró can be admired only at the National History Museum of Romania.
     

    BIBLIOGRAPHY 

    Cirlot, Juan Eduardo, Pictura contemporană, Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1969; Dragomir, Kiriac şi Surpăţeanu, Aurel, Catalogul mărcilor poştale româneşti, Casa Scânteii, Bucureşti, 1974; Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró Life and Work, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publisher, New York City, 1962, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-19132; Manole, Mircea, Catalogul timbrelor poştale, vol. II 1948-1989, S.C. Impex Zimbrul Carpatin, Bucureşti, 2008; Muresanu, Camelia , Suprarealismul, Universitatea Bucuresti, 2004; Juan Miró, Publishing Services, Bucuresti 2002