Somersault (Le Renversement), 1924
Oil, pencil, charcoal, and tempera on canvas board, 36 3/8 x 28 11/16 in. (92.4 x 72.8 cm)
Gift of Collection Société Anonyme
1941.572
©2004 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Somersault typifies the imaginative visual language of Miró's paintings based on the land around his family's farm in Montroig, Catalonia from 1923–24, when he first experimented in the symbolism and wordplay associated with Surrealism. In Somersault, Miró reverses the customary horizontal orientation of landscape painting. Its unusual verticality is only one of a series of rotations or reversals that suggest a surrealist dreamworld rather than reality. A delicately drawn horse and wheel drift in the sky like a moon and constellation, thrown perhaps from their course on the adjacent mountains; so too does a mustached stick figure, his smoking pipe now at his feet. Formed like a letter and flanked by the exclamations "AH!!" and "HoO!" he inhabits a world of text and image, sight and sound, suggesting Surrealism's roots in poetry.
For more information on the Société Anonyme Collection, please visit http://artgallery.yale.edu/socanon.
 |
 |
 |