Head of a Catalan Peasant

Head of a Catalan Peasant
Artist	Joan Miró
Year	1924-1925
Collection	National Gallery of Art
[edit on Wikidata]

Head of a Catalan Peasant is an emblematic sequence of oil paintings and pencil made by Joan Miró between 1924 and 1925. Miró began this series the same year that André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism. The series was made partly in Paris. For Joan Miró "a peasant" symbolized rural knowledge, and also reflected his Catalan identity.

The Fundació Joan Miró of Barcelona keeps several preparatory drawings for this series.^[1][2][3]

The work demonstrates that Miró had ties with his homeland throughout his career.^[4] Joan Miró created this series in response to the prohibition of the Catalan language by Miguel Primo de Rivera. He was also influenced by the rural environment of Baix Camp. In this series he further develops the language started in works such as Catalan Landscape (The Hunter). The sequence followed by Miró has been interpreted several times as a progressive simplification of the same scene.^[5] Christopher Green, in turn, says that this is not exactly a linear trend toward simplification, but rather a dilemma, an internal discussion between the artist which creates the filled pictorial space.^{[citation needed]}