In a Freudian posthumous twist, researchers found a portrait of Catalan artist Joan Miró’s mom hid beneath his “Painting” practically a century after its completion in 1927.
Researchers at Barcelona’s Fundació Joan Miró, a museum and middle for scholarship on the late artist and up to date artwork at massive, introduced final week in a press assertion that “Painting” overlaid a portrait of his mom, Dolors Ferrà i Oromí. The invention comes virtually 50 years after the muse first detected the likeness of a mysterious girl behind the deep blue paint.
Miró, typically described as a Surrealist, gifted “Painting” to his pal Joan Prats, who owned the work till his dying in 1970. 5 years later, Fundació Joan Miró acquired the work. In 1978, the group carried out the primary X-ray of the portray throughout a preliminary restoration report, which revealed a portrait of an unidentified girl.
In the newest examine led by Head of Preventive Conservation and Restoration Elisabet Serrat, basis researchers used extra superior strategies, together with infrared images and X-ray spectroscopy and fluorescence, to discern who the mysterious girl was.
Fundació Joan Miró has recognized in regards to the portrait beneath “Painting” for the reason that Nineteen Seventies, however has not been capable of establish its topic till now.
In keeping with Fundació Joan Miró, the Catalan artist overpainted different works — largely to criticize what he deemed “imitative painting.” The identical yr “Painting” was accomplished, Miró famously declared his intent to “assassinate painting” in a problem to creative conference. Between 1940 and 1960, Miró overpainted portraits, and by the Nineteen Seventies, he hid largely landscapes.
In later iterations of protecting present artworks, Miró typically left proof suggesting the bottom portray’s existence. Within the case of “Painting,” Miró left behind raised clumps of paint over the brooch and earrings of his mom’s portrait.
Researchers suspect the unique portrait was painted by Cristòfol Montserrat Jorba, who additionally painted an analogous portrait of the artist’s mom in 1907. The subsumed girl was recognized as Miró’s mom based mostly on the technical similarity between these two works in addition to Serrat’s remark that the 2 faces have been “exactly the same,” as she instructed the Guardian.
Cristòfol Montserrat Jorba’s “Portrait of Dolors Ferrà i Oromí” (1907) led researchers to conclude that the artist painted the portrait underlying Joan Miró’s “Painting” (1927)
An evaluation of the paint means that Miró used zinc white to organize the second-hand canvas for his new work. Researchers aren’t certain why the artist determined to smother the portrait of his mom for this specific portray, however the basis instructed it might have been out of comfort.
However the group’s government director, Marko Daniel, instructed the Guardian he has a special concept.
“It is an act of rebellion. But Miró was already 32 when he started this, so it’s not a juvenile act of rebellion against his parents,” Daniel mentioned. As an alternative, he suspects it was an act “against the kind of world that his parents represented; the middle-class aspirations to being ever so slightly posher than you really are.”
The findings are the topic of the establishment’s exhibition Beneath the Layers of Miró: A Scientific Investigation, which can run by way of June 29.
{A photograph} utilizing transmitted infrared gentle exhibits particulars of the portrait topic’s face. (© Successió Miró, 2025)
