Joan Miro's "Horse, Pipe and Red Flower"

Maybe I never spent time looking at Joan Miro's Horse, Pipe and Red Flower or the Philadelphia Museum of Art recently rotated the painting from storage to public exhibition. This is an early Miro painting from 1920.

I prefer the work of early Miro because it's less reductive and sometimes contains an encyclopedic grouping of visual information. A good example of Miro's early work is the 1921 painting The Farm from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Farm

Miro's later work is reductive and sometimes has qualities of surrealistic automation which does not appeal to me.

The Horse, Pipe and Red Flower painting has a collage-like composition where most of the space is flatten. The book, pipe and receding edge of the table describe a shallow dimensional spacial niche. There is a wonderful surface patterning and a strong tonal contrast of color.

This is a very complete painting that I desire to revisit at the museum.

An interesting article about Miro's life can be read online on The Guardian website.