Danseuse (Dancer)

Between 1928 and 1934 Joan Miró approaches the techniques of collage and building objects as a means of anti-pictorial rebellion against the traditional concepts of art. In his final period, from the sixties onwards, he aims to create a series of works that preserve his traditional and fascinating attraction to objects, yet the clear desire to build a corpus of sculptures leads him to the use of one of the most ancient techniques from this discipline: casting.
The Museo Reina Sofía’s collection of Miró sculptures, consisting of 43 works dating from 1967 to 1981, responds to this criterion. They are works that arise from a great variety of always humble objects, and that after a long process of definition in which he prepared a multitude of drawings and sketches, was completed with the casting and the patinating of the bronze in the Parellada workshop in Barcelona.
Danseuse (Dancer, 1981) is a later work in which the artist shows the extraordinary power of his artistic inventiveness and his exceptional way of approaching the creation of sculpture, starting from reality and creating strange and imaginative figures that arouse feelings and emotions. In this case, Miró used a doughnut-shaped piece of bread, a can, pieces of cane, a piece of moulded clay and a hook to tackle the subject of the dancer, which during the interwar years he used, employing collage technique, for his most irreverent anti-painting works. The figure of the woman with outstretched arms is incredibly original and imaginative, while also revealing an undeniable connection with reality due to the artist’s clear desire to show the objects from which the sculpture is composed.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio