Grand personnage ; projet pour un monument

Material

Bronze with black patina; 370 x 265 x 115 cm

Dating

Conceived in 1981 and cast in the artist’s lifetime

About the artwork

edition 4/4

The idea for this monumental sculpture started out as a table-top sized figurine, which Joan Miró created in 1949 and, from model to model, increased in size over the years until in 1981 it reached the 3.7 metres which are shown here. The title of the work suggests an even larger version was planned, but if one had been intended, none was actually cast. This is the monument itself and it belongs to the largest sculptures ever created by Miró.
In any case, this ‘Grand Personnage’ is certainly female. Her upper body is concave and womb-like. She carries her breasts on her back and, engraved on her torso, she wears the typically Miróesque emblem of her sex. Throughout his creative period, the artist developed several mysterious signs, which reappear in his works and act as replacements and symbols. Miró’s cryptic visual language is reminiscent of African and oceanic cultures and their appreciation of art. Accordingly, the half-moons on the sculpture’s torso stand for desire, because their shape resembles the bow of the Greek goddess of the hunt and fertility. The big oval shape in the middle of the torso symbolises the female genitals.
The ‘Grand Personnage’ could for instance represent ‘Mère Ubu’, as Miró often delighted in depicting the characters from Alfred Jarry’s 1896 farcical play, which was very popular with the Surrealists at that time. In the play, the ‘Mère Ubu’ is a havoc-wreaking and power-obsessed manipulator. Miró depicted her in exactly that way: She bestrides the space she occupies atop a pair of ponderous, elephantine legs, one of which is adorned with a single Cyclopean eye. She is a monstrous, Neolithic fertility goddess, which seemingly came to life. She would wreak havoc, crushing anyone in her path, if she could walk. Correspondingly Miró stated: “It is in sculpture that I will create a truly phantasmagoric world of living monsters; what I do in painting is much more conventional.”

About the artist

After he had dropped out of high school because of bad grades, the Spanish artist started a commercial apprenticeship at the request of his father. But already during his apprenticeship, Miró attended classes at the ‘La Llotja’ art academy in Barcelona, because his professional career did not satisfy him. Shortly after, he suffered a nervous breakdown at work and therefore quit his job as a commercial clerk.
The family moved to a farm in Mont-roig del Camp so that Miró could recover properly. His father’s resistance to an artistic education dwindled and Miró was allowed to attend Francesc Galí’s private art school ‘Escola d’Art’. Galí considered his student to be highly gifted and introduced him to the modern French genres and to Antoni Gaudí’s architecture.
Over the years, Miró created an abundance of poetic pictorial symbols with a suggestive power of form and colour. Based on Catalan folklore and influenced by Cubism and Surrealism, the artist completed a vast number of works. Besides his paintings, Miró also produced sculptures, statuary arts, ceramics, printed graphics and oversized theatre puppets. His extensive oeuvre consists of over 2000 oil paintings, 500 sculptures, 400 ceramics and 5000 collages and drawings. His graphic output includes over 3500 works, mostly lithographs and etchings, which were printed in small runs.