Getty Museum

Personnage

Date

designed 1976; cast 1985

Medium

Bronze

Culture

Spanish

Department

Sculpture

Institution

Getty Museum

This slender vertical form suggests a human figure. Its curved top can be read as a head replete with incised nose and eyes. But the deeply gouged out channels across the surface and three bulbous protrusions undermine the human elements of the image. This totemic "personage" equally evokes a tree, root, flower, or something entirely imaginary. Although best known as a painter, Joan Miró's interest in sculpture dates to his late teens. But it was not until 1944, buoyed by a friend's encouragement, that he began to create three dimensional forms. Miró generally began his sculptures with found objects that he kept in his studio. Once the artist had combined or assembled these objects, they could be enlarged in plaster, carved or distressed, and sometimes cast in bronze. Although the found objects that initiated this work are unknown, the protruding knobs convey Miró's additive approach to sculpture. The rugged incisions that cover the form endow the object with a handmade quality, evoking the sculptor's hand moving across the surface with a blunt instrument.

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