Group of Women (Groupe de femmes)

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

Here Joan Miró depicted the figures' flailing gestures against a smoky background in order to evoke the calamity of aerial bombardment, a frequent occurrence during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The iconography of Group of Women echoes the forms of Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), which infamously portrayed the bombing of a Basque town. The top-right figure's upturned head, with her tongue stretched into a scream, could be seen as a reference to Guernica 's sword-tongued horse and wailing mother.

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