Peinture (Painting)

Joan Miró

1925

On View in Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, Room 3

In the mid-1920s the Spanish Surrealist artist Joan Miró made line drawings in paint of semiabstract figures and signs that hinted at personal and symbolic meanings. In Peinture, a diagrammatic arrangement of solid and dotted lines, letters, and shapes in red and black appears to float over a horizonless space. Miró created the illusion of a bound less vaporous atmosphere by applying layers of diluted paint over a canvas sized with glue to reduce permeability, resulting in an uneven absorption of paint. Over the mottled background, the profile of a mustachioed bourgeois gentleman is delineated by a thin line that ends in a thick red coil suggestive of anatomical or scatological associations. The ambiguity of this visual innuendo is underscored by the letters J O I along the left side of the canvas, which may allude to the French words joie (joy), jouer (to play), journal (newspaper), or jouir (to enjoy). [Permanent collection label, 2019]

Artist Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983)
Title Peinture (Painting)
Date 1925
Medium Oil on linen
Dimensions unframed | 39 1/2 x 28 3/4 in.
Credit line Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Weil, 1963
Object number WU 4130

Technique oil painting
Work type painting

Currently on View Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, Room 3

Short-term loans for display in galleries
Saint Louis Art Museum, 06/06/2018 - 08/04/2019

From Picasso to Fontana: Collecting Modern and Postwar Art in the Eisendrath Years, 1960–1968
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/23/2015 - 04/19/2015

Face and Figure in European Art, 1928–1945
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/25/2013 - 04/21/2013

Dada and Surrealism: Rethinking Reason
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/28/2011 - 04/18/2011

Picasso to Pollock: H.W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, Texas), 08/17/2004 - 10/24/2004

H. W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art at Washington University in St. Louis
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/30/2002 - 12/08/2002
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries (New York, New York), 03/12/2002 - 04/06/2002

Joan Miró, 1918–1945
Setagaya Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan), 07/27/2002 - 09/23/2002
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (Nagoya, Japan), 10/04/2002 - 12/01/2002

Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/12/1998 - 04/05/1998

A Gallery of Modern Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/09/1994 - 10/16/1994

The Centennial Exhibition
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/15/1981 - 10/11/1981

Miró: Selected Paintings
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 06/27/1980 - 08/17/1980

Joán Miro: The Development of a Sign Language
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 03/19/1980 - 04/27/1980
Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 05/15/1980 - 06/18/1980

Cubist, Expressionist, and Surrealist Paintings and Sculptures
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/20/1980 - 11/02/1980

20th Century Masterworks from St. Louis Collections
Saint Louis Art Museum, 12/01/1973 - 02/03/1974

Washington University Collection of Modern Paintings and Sculpture from Daumier to Pollock
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 04/06/1966 - 05/08/1966

Miró in St. Louis
Saint Louis Art Museum, 10/01/1965 - 11/07/1965

H. W. Janson and the Legacy of Modern Art 2002

1963
Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Weil, St. Louis

Inscription Recto, lower right: Miró

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