Untitled 1947

Two big faces dominate this canvas, though calling them faces might be generous. On the left, a bright green head tilts up with a single red eye and a red dot for lips. On the right, a white shape floats like a cloud, marked with a yellow nose and thin dark features. Between them a tangle of red, black, yellow, and blue twists across the middle, part body, part pure invention. Miró filled the whole thing with playful signs: a black star, wobbly antennae, little dangling balls on the ends of thin lines.

Joan Miró was a Spanish artist who spent his long career loosening painting from the rules of realism. He painted this in 1947, the year he made his first trip to the United States, where he was working on a large mural in Cincinnati. Miró liked to say he wanted to paint the way children draw, free and direct, so he built his own alphabet of shapes and used it again and again. The loose blue background here, brushed on so you can see the strokes, feels almost like sky or water, giving these odd characters somewhere to drift. It is worth noticing the little balls hanging from strings, a favorite Miró touch that shows up across his work like a signature.