Joan Miró — The Farm, 1922
Joan Miró painted The Farm between the summer of 1921 in Moint-roig del Camp and winter 1922 in Paris, devoting as many as eight hours per day for nine months to its completion. It depicts a traditional masía (Catalan: mas), essentially a familial farming compound commonly found throughout Catalonia.
Miró himself described this painting as “a summary of my entire life in the country,” which perhaps explains the nearly maniacal attention to detail. “I wanted to put everything I loved about the country into that canvas — from a huge tree to a tiny snail.” (Here’s a photo of the real thing in case you’re curious like I was.)
Famously, Miró’s vision resonated with Ernest Hemingway, who wrote that the painting “has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and all that you feel when you are away and cannot go there,” and that “no one else has been able to paint these two very opposing things.”
When all is said and done, I would give up a LOT to be in a room with both Hemingway and Miró.
1920s Landscape Joan Miró Oil on canvas
Originally published on Tumblr
