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Joan Miró. Aidez l'Espagne. (Help Spain) 1937. Pochoir, 9 3/4 x 7 5/8" (24.8 x 19.4 cm) © 1998 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris |
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Joan Miró. Plate 8 from the Black and Red Series. 1938. Etching, 6 5/8 x 10 1/8" (16.8 x 25.8 cm) © 1998 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris |
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| Miró tried to help directly by designing this poster in support of the Republican cause. He depicts a menacing figure of defiance, representing a peasant from Catalonia, his native region. The red cap identifies the peasant. In 1937 the Spanish Republican Government commissioned Miró to create a mural-size painting, The Reaper (also known as Catalan Peasant in Revolt), for the Spanish Pavilion at the World's Fair in Paris that year. (Pablo Picasso's famous Guernica, inspired by the wartime bombing of that city, also appeared in the Pavilion.) The turmoil of the final print in the Black and Red Series could be interpreted as a metaphor for the irrationality of the war. By printing and superimposing his plates in both proper and reverse orientations, Miró makes manifest a world turned upside-down, filled with chaotic activity. |
