Sculpture allowed Miró to embody his long-time preoccupations, as here, the moon, the bird, and the theme of Catalonia, fuse into one iconic and idiosyncratic three-dimensional form. Miró turned to sculpture in the 1940s, feeling as he said, "It is in sculpture that I will create a truly phantasmagoric world of living monsters; what I do in painting is more conventional." He molded the works by hand, as this work, created in 1946-49, shows in its soft contours and sensitive modeling. As a result, the work seems to have sprung out of the natural world, resembling an organic form that has taken shape in dark shining metal. In the 1960s, he enlarged the original model to make casts of the work, which can be found in museums and sculptural parks throughout the world.
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