Lunar Bird
Joan Mir贸 (1893 to 1983) 路 1966
In the courtyard garden of the old hospital, among box hedges and gravel, stands a black bronze creature nearly three metres tall. It has a fat swelling body, two horns like a crescent moon, a beak or perhaps a tongue thrust forward, and stubby arms raised as if it were about to take off or to embrace you. Children instantly want to climb it. Mir贸 called it Lunar Bird, and it has a companion in his work called Solar Bird; together they belong to the private mythology of birds, moons, women and stars that he drew and painted for sixty years.
The form goes back to a small plaster model that Mir贸 made in the mid 1940s, when he first turned seriously to sculpture. In 1966, at the age of seventy three, he had it enlarged and cast in bronze at a foundry near Paris, and the same model exists in several casts, including one in marble. Look at the surface, which keeps the rough hand shaped quality of the original plaster, and at the way the silhouette changes completely as you walk round it: from one side it is a bird, from another a horned beast, from another something that looks like a laughing face. Mir贸 wanted his sculptures to be touched and lived with, not admired from a distance.
The Reina Sof铆a holds a large group of Mir贸's late works, and this bronze is one of several sculptures placed in the garden, where they can be seen against the plain grey stone of the Sabatini building. It is the friendliest work in the museum and a good place to end a visit, sitting on a bench in the shade with the bird looking over your shoulder.
Did You Know? Mir贸 made his first Lunar Bird as a tiny clay figure in 1944 that he could hold in one hand; the bronze in the garden is more than twenty times larger.
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