Construction, 1930 by Joan Miro

Miro's Constructions which were produced between 1929 and 1930, belong to the critical stage in the artist's creative career. As he himself put it, he wanted to "murder art", i.e. "oil-and-vinegar" art, what was called bonne peinture, in order to retrieve a set of primeval values of expression - if necessary even against the normal rules of aestheticism.

Miro created this construction from a number of simple, ordinary materials, such as bits of wooden boxes, nails and paper clips. Only the shapes still remind us of Miro's biomorphic picture language. However, the crude and unpretentious style of the entire object eliminates all aspirations of sublime poetry and puts it firmly back where it originated, i.e. the sphere of the do-it-yourself man whose problems begin with the hammering of nails.