Miró created Still Life with Old Shoe in Paris over a four-month period of intense concentration, working from life for the first time in many years. The painting eschews simple categorization. It is both a still life and a landscape: the irregular back edge of the tabletop can be read as a horizon line. The objects are not to scale, and they are isolated in discrete cells, creating a formal rupture that calls to mind Miró’s work in collage. The color is acidic, highly saturated, and dissonant. For Miró this painting captured a "profound and fascinating reality."
Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927—1937, November 2, 2008–January 12, 2009.
Gallery label from 2015.
Miró created Still Life with Old Shoe in Paris over a four-month period of intense concentration, working from life for the first time in many years. The painting eschews simple categorization. It is both a still life and a landscape: the irregular back edge of the tabletop can be read as a horizon line. The objects are not to scale, and they are isolated in discrete cells, creating a formal rupture that calls to mind Miró's work in collage. The color is acidic, highly saturated, and dissonant. For Miró this painting captured a "profound and fascinating reality."
Provenance Research Project
This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.
Galerie Pierre (Pierre Loeb), Paris. 1937
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York. From Pierre Loeb, January - May, 1938
Mr. and Mrs. C. Earle Miller, Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Acquired from Pierre Matisse, May 1938 - February 1944
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York. Reacquired from Earle Miller, February - March, 1944
James Thrall Soby (1906-1979), New Canaan, Connecticut. Acquired from Pierre Matisse by exchange (for a Derain still life), March 15, 1944 - 1969
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of James Thrall Soby, February 1969
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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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