The Spanish Playing Cards

Joan Miró

1920

Oil on canvas

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A still life painting depicts a table setting with fruit, a bottle, playing cards, and a knife. The composition is fragmented and geometric. A still life painting depicts a table setting with fruit, a bottle, playing cards, and a knife. The composition is fragmented and geometric. Joan Miró's first encounter with the Cubist works of Picasso and Braque in 1919 inspired a group of still lifes - including <I>Spanish Playing Cards</I> - that he executed in 1920. Here, the stylized realism of Miró's previous work combined with the geometric faceting of synthetic Cubism. The densely painted objects retain their identity, but the surrounding space is fractured into patterned lines and angles. Miró continued working in this manner until 1924, when he joined the Surrealist moveme