A fresh perspective on the pictorial world of Miró's early work

This volume explores the early work of Joan Miró (1893-1983) from the 1920s and 1930s, a period when the artist formed the core visual lexicon that would come to occupy him throughout his entire career. Published for an exhibition at Luxembourg + Co., New York, the book follows a new proposition outlined by Eric Robertson, who suggests that the key to Miró's work from these years begins with his fascination with ground--both as a subject connected to his Catalan roots and as a technical interest in constructing the background of his pictorial universe using monochromatic, uneven surfaces. It is from the ground, explains Robertson, that the formal language developed by Miró during these years emerges as a unique symbolic vocabulary, incorporating a host of biomorphic forms such as body shapes, eyes, feet and male and female genitalia, as well as signs like stars, flowers, grids, letters and numbers.