Joan Miró Captures Anger and Anxiety in a Revolutionary Figure

With his homeland at the precipice of civil war, Joan Miró was experiencing an existential crisis. What did it mean to be a Spaniard in a country increasingly defined by division? Join Sotheby’s August Uribe, Vice Chairman, Head of Impressionist & Modern Art, in an exploration of how Miró channeled this angst and despair into his masterwork Figure, offered as a highlight of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening sale. At once whimsical and horrifying, Figure features a swollen anatomy rendered in strong shocks of color and dynamic chiaroscuro that catapults the figure off the page. This series of fifteen “savage paintings” created in 1934 reached a pitch of intensity and clarity that was only matched by the great series that followed, The Constellations.