Joan Miró – Circus Horse (1927)

Artist: Joan Miró (Spanish, Barcelona 1893–1983 Palma de Mallorca)

Title: Circus Horse Date: 1927

Medium/Technique: Tempera on canvas

Dimensions: 51 3/8 × 38 1/4 in. (130.5 × 97.2 cm)

Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This work belongs to a suite of some seventy dream pictures executed in Miró’s remarkably free new style during the first half of 1927. In April and May of that year, he focused on a circus theme, perhaps prompted by Alexander Calder’s concurrent performances of his miniature circus. Here, a ringmaster conducts with his red arms and yellow whip a toy horse that appears in other paintings by Miró. The novelty of Miró’s style impressed many visitors to his 1928 exhibition in Paris. Giacometti recalled thinking that Miró’s paintings were “more aerial, more disengaged, lighter than anything I had ever seen.” A critic remarked: “From now on, [Miró] acts in the world of magic.”

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