The Escape Ladder 1940

Joan Miró made this painting, The Escape Ladder, with oil on canvas and it’s a dreamy landscape of symbols. Looking at this, I'm thinking about Miró moving his hand, laying down these graphic shapes. The grounds are a kind of blurry wash, like watercolor almost, against which he places these solid forms, so that the picture feels both atmospheric and very grounded. There are circles, triangles and rectangles, and these spiky lines that could be stars or suns. They’re all floating in a grey space, with just enough color to keep it interesting. I feel his hand in the making of the piece, and his mind; I wonder what it would have been like to be Miró, thinking of the ladder, and the escape. In the context of Miró's wider practice, this painting reveals his surrealist tendencies and how he embraced abstraction as a means of tapping into the subconscious. Like Paul Klee, he transformed basic forms into something magical. It's like they're all having a conversation, these artists, exchanging secrets across time.