This frieze of figures with lyrical black contours floating on a ground of browns and blues was commissioned for the Harvard University graduate dining hall at the suggestion of architect Walter Gropius. Miró executed Mural Painting in Barcelona after his sketches had been approved. His subject is thought to be a bullfight with a large bull in the middle flanked by a banderillero on the left and a matador on the right. The figure second from the left has been read as the rear of a picador’s horse. Ten years after installing this commission in the dining hall, Miró replaced it with a more durable ceramic tile version, and the original painting was acquired by the Museum.
2007.
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Joan Miró
Spanish, 1893–1983 487 works onlineJoan Miró’s painting The Hunter (Catalan Landscape) brings together the real and the imaginary, abstraction and figuration, and image and text in a way that would characterize much of his work to come.
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Mural
A large painting applied to a wall or ceiling, especially in a public space.
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