Night Birds

Joan Miro's Night Birds (1938) is a gouache and graphite drawing with scraping on tan wove paper. The title Night Birds suggests a nocturnal scene with birds, but as always with Miro, the subject is transformed through his characteristic vocabulary of abstract forms and signs. The birds are suggested rather than described, their forms reduced to essential shapes that convey the idea of birds in flight or at rest in the night. The gouache medium provides opaque, vibrant colors, while the graphite adds linear structure. The scraping technique creates texture by removing areas of gouache to reveal the paper beneath. The tan wove paper provides a warm ground. This work dates from 1938, a year of political crisis in Europe, and the night birds may carry a symbolic weight appropriate to the darkening times. Miro's work of this period often reflects the anxiety and violence of the Spanish Civil War and the approaching world war.

Miro's late 1930s works reflect the political turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, using the vocabulary of Surrealism to express the anxieties of the time.

This gouache of night birds captures the mystery and anxiety of the nocturnal world, Miro's simplified forms and scraping technique creating a work that is both playful and unsettling.