- Title
- Group of Figures (Groupe de Personnages)
- Date Made
- 1938
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 21 x 24 1/2 in. (53.34 x 62.23 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2005.38.8
- Collecting Area
- Modern Art
- Curatorial Notes
Shortly after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), Joan Miró left his native country to visit Paris, where, unable to return to Spain, he would remain for the next four years. Deeply affected by the 1937 bombing of Guernica and the spread of Nazism, Miró struggled to adapt to the challenging working and living conditions for his family. Nevertheless, he would produce many remarkable works during his Paris stay, many of them small in scale like Group of Figures, painted on October 17, 1938. Known for his surreal, fanciful images that express the subconscious, here Miró positions a frightened figure with raised arms and hair on end, about to be attacked from below and to the right by predatory forms.
Wall label, 2021.
- Provenance
The artist (1893-1983); [Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York]; sold between 1938 and 1940 to Dr. Albert C. Barnes. Charles Laughton (1899–1962), Los Angeles; sold to Billy Wilder (1906-2002), Los Angeles; [Paul Kantor, Beverly Hills]; sold in 1957 to Robert H. Halff; bequeathed in 2005 LACMA.
- Selected Bibliography
- Greenberg, Clement. Joan Miró. New York: Quadrangle Press, 1950.
- Dupin, Jacques, and Ariane Lelong-Mainaud. Joan Miró: Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings. Paris and Palma de Mallorca: Daniel Lelong and Succesió Miró, 2000.
