Oiseau lunaire (Moonbird)

Joan Miró

Barcelona, Spain, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 1983
  • Date: 
    1966
  • Material: 
    Bronze
  • Technique: 
    Casting
  • Dimensions: 
    234 x 210 x 150 cm
  • Edition/serial number: 
    Nominative copy
  • Category: 
    Sculpture
  • Entry date: 
    1992
  • Register number: 
    DE00041
  • On display in:
    Sabatini Garden

In the 1940s, Joan Miró approached sculpture from a similar basic standpoint to that which had first attracted him to the discipline in the middle of the surrealist period in Paris. His purpose, however, had changed: his inspiration was more markedly oneiric and his subject matter connected to the cosmic world. In Oiseau lunaire (Moonbird), the first version of which dates from 1946-1949, one can see the legacy of the nature-based organic forms so closely associated with one section of early surrealist sculpture – particularly that of Jean Arp – but with a subject area that was typical of the Catalan painter, referring equally to the Constellations series done during Second World War and to the world of birds, which Miró saw as the connection between the terrestrial and celestial worlds. Miró brought together metaphorical mineral forms and ideas from the natural and cosmic world to create a strange, hybrid character, a sort of monster with a shining, polished surface, clearly owing something to the sculptures of Pablo Picasso (particularly the large figures he made in Boisgeloup) and to other major hybrid creations, such as those found in Max Ernst’s iconography. Oiseau lunaire represents a combination of a number of themes common to Surrealism and the language that Miró created.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio

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