In 1927, Joan Miró made an impressive statement: “I want to murder painting”. It was a rebellion against the dreary commercialization of art, and in support of a new form of expression that was a far cry from exclusive elitism.

The untitled painting known as The Lovers in the Night, painted in 1934, dates from this period. It is a collage, made using Indian ink on aluminium paper. Between 1927 and 1937, Miró, like the Dadaists, decided to use collage to incorporate into his pictures items that had previously been thought of as incongruous, such as stones, sandpaper or cork. He also decided to paint on new supports, such as bones or mussel shells. He was not always successful during this period and he even had to sell some of his pictures in exchange for a meal.

Opposite this work, in this room you can also see his 1934 Surrealist painting Snail, Woman, Flower and Star. From this work onwards, Miró’s figures began to acquire sinuous, elongated forms, a distortion that was to become one of the characteristic features of his work. The words of the title are written on the canvas in French, like a kind of half-way point between painting and poetry, with which Miró had always identified.

As from 1937, given the social and political background of the time, particularly after the start of the Spanish Civil War, Miró felt the need to return to artistic approaches that he had abandoned over the previous ten years.

(c) (R) 2012, MUSMon com S.L.