Painting (Figures with Stars)

The "personages" we see here—organic figures with tiny heads, disjointed appendages, and schematic breasts—reflect the experimentation across media for which Joan Miró is best known. First in his Barcelona studio in 1933, the artist made a series of small paper collages from precisely rendered engravings of household and mechanical objects. Then, he translated these compositions into large abstract paintings, with multicolored, amorphous forms rendered in silhouette. Inspired by this series, Miró derived Paintings (Figures with Stars) as a cartoon, or full-scale preparatory work, for a tapestry commissioned by French art collector and gallery director Marie Cuttoli, effecting yet another material transformation of his original design from collage to painting to textile.