Circus Horse

Joan Miró

1927 · Tempera on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

This work belongs to a suite of some seventy "dream" pictures that Miró created in 1927. Influenced both by Surrealism and the narrative geometry of Paul Klee, Miró created whimsical, dreamlike compositions throughout the 1920s. In this painting of a circus, a bright blue ground provides the arena for a dancing horse and a central figure—the ringmaster, perhaps—whose yellow whip crisscrosses the canvas in a meditative, meandering line. As a critic remarked in 1928, Miró "acts in the world of magic."

Artist

Joan Miró

Date

1927

Medium

Tempera on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman, 2006