Femme oiseau I (Bird Woman I)

In Joan Miró’s later paintings, the concept of gravitas, of "the blackness" and the telluric, expands its presence. These are works in which energy seems brutally liberated, and where the chromatic palette is defined by sombre, ochre and reddish hues. This is the case in Femme oiseau I (Bird Woman I, 1977) and its companion Femme oiseau II (Bird Woman II), a pair of paintings that show how the energy of symbols, in which Miró submerged himself after his last trip to the United States in 1968, was a good vehicle to express himself when, without giving up his iconographic universe, he sought to represent the idea of returning to one’s roots. This large-scale canvas connects with the "savage paintings" from the thirties in which Miró uses copious amounts of formal inventiveness. As is the case in this work, the figures are sombre and organic, and appear as silhouetted and transparent shapes, resembling hybrid characters in a stifling atmosphere where they are the only protagonists. In Femme oiseau I the same thing occur: the figure expands towards the margins of the painting, and the potency of its black lines describes an oppressive atmosphere that limits its movement, connecting it with the painter’s vision of reality during the last years of his life.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio