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The Farm (Miró)

The Farm
Catalan: La Masia
TheFarmMiro21to22.jpg
Artist Joan Miró
Year 1921–1922
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 123.8 cm × 141.3 cm (48.7 in × 55.6 in)
Location National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Farm is an oil painting made by Joan Miró between the summer of 1921 in Mont-roig del Camp and winter 1922 in Paris. It is a kind of inventory of the masia (traditional Catalan farmhouse) owned by his family since 1911 in the town of Mont-roig del Camp. Miró himself regarded this work as a key in his career, describing it as "a summary of my entire life in the countryside" and "the summary of one period of my work, but also the point of departure for what was to follow." It is preserved in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, where it was given in 1987 by Mary Hemingway, coming from the private collection of American writer Ernest Hemingway, who had described it by saying, “It has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and all that you feel when you are away and cannot go there. No one else has been able to paint these two very opposing things.”

The painter, though born in Barcelona, was always linked with the rural world, especially the town of Mont-roig del Camp, and his early works show an influence of the landscapes and characters in their summer country views in the land of Tarragona. This relationship with the land can be captured in the paintings produced between 1918 and 1924 as Vegetable Garden with Donkey(1918) or Montroig, the church and the people(1919). The work of The farm was started on Miró's first trip back to Mont-roig del Camp from France, and was completed in Paris. It was a time when Miró was established in Paris and alternated with some travels, especially summers in Mont-Roig.

The observation of everything around him and the lights on the rocks and trees, that changed in certain times the brightness of the sun, made the artist feel bound to the element earth, which was said:

... is essential to have your feet firmly resting on the ground to lift the flight through the air when painting [...] has to walk on land, because, through the limbs, it communicates its force.


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Wikipedia

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