Circus Horse
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."
Artwork Details
- Title: Circus Horse
- Artist: Joan Miró (Spanish, Barcelona 1893–1983 Palma de Mallorca)
- Date: 1927
- Medium: Distemper on canvas
- Dimensions: 51 3/8 × 38 1/4 in. (130.5 × 97.2 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman, 2006
- Object Number: 2006.32.44
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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