Bronze with black patina; 370 x 265 x 115 cm<\/p>\n
Conceived in 1981 and cast in the artist’s lifetime<\/p>\n
edition 4\/4<\/p>\n
The idea for this monumental sculpture started out as a table-top sized figurine, which Joan Mir\u00f3 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 Mir\u00f3.
\nIn 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 Mir\u00f3esque 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. Mir\u00f3\u2019s cryptic visual language is reminiscent of African and oceanic cultures and their appreciation of art. Accordingly, the half-moons on the sculpture\u2019s 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.
\nThe ‘Grand Personnage’ could for instance represent ‘M\u00e8re Ubu’, as Mir\u00f3 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 ‘M\u00e8re Ubu’ is a havoc-wreaking and power-obsessed manipulator. Mir\u00f3 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 Mir\u00f3 stated: \u201cIt is in sculpture that I will create a truly phantasmagoric world of living monsters; what I do in painting is much more conventional.\u201d<\/p>\n
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, Mir\u00f3 attended classes at the \u2018La Llotja\u2019 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.
\nThe family moved to a farm in Mont-roig del Camp so that Mir\u00f3 could recover properly. His father\u2019s resistance to an artistic education dwindled and Mir\u00f3 was allowed to attend Francesc Gal\u00ed\u2019s private art school \u2018Escola d\u2019Art\u2019. Gal\u00ed considered his student to be highly gifted and introduced him to the modern French genres and to Antoni Gaud\u00ed\u2019s architecture.
\nOver the years, Mir\u00f3 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, Mir\u00f3 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 Mir\u00f3 created in 1949 and, from model to model, increased in size over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1537,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1236,"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/779\/revisions\/1236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/art.thedoldergrand.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}