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Lot Essay
In the recent editions of his comprehensive monograph on Miró, Jacques Dupin has disclosed how he had initially looked upon the artist's sculptures as works created in conjunction with his better known achievements in painting, collage and ceramics. However, he eventually altered this view, in light of the scope and scale of the artist's later work in bronze:
The sculptures from the last two decades of Miró's productive life took on a broad place and force. For Miró, sculpture became an intrinsic adventure, an important means of expression that competed with the canvas and sheet of paper--the domains and artistic spaces proper to Miró--without ever simply being a mere derivative or deviation from painting. Miró's approach and conception of sculpture offered him an immediate contact with a reality that, in painting, was attainable through the screen of an elaborately constructed language.
Miró had formed the desire to leave the laboratory behind, to go beyond easel painting for the sake of a new space, and more impersonal sites, less confined and protected than those of the studio. He dreamt of the street, public squares, gardens and cities. Just as he had always sought to transgress painting, he now sought to transgress his own work, to cross over the boundaries of walled galleries and museums. He wanted to address his work to anonymous crowds, to the unknown viewer. One starts off by modeling a figurine in clay and winds up erecting a city monument (in Miró, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 361 and 367).
The present work is a maquette for L'arc, a monumental sculpture on the grounds of the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (fig. 1).
(fig. 1) Photograph of L'Arc at Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de Vence.
The sculptures from the last two decades of Miró's productive life took on a broad place and force. For Miró, sculpture became an intrinsic adventure, an important means of expression that competed with the canvas and sheet of paper--the domains and artistic spaces proper to Miró--without ever simply being a mere derivative or deviation from painting. Miró's approach and conception of sculpture offered him an immediate contact with a reality that, in painting, was attainable through the screen of an elaborately constructed language.
Miró had formed the desire to leave the laboratory behind, to go beyond easel painting for the sake of a new space, and more impersonal sites, less confined and protected than those of the studio. He dreamt of the street, public squares, gardens and cities. Just as he had always sought to transgress painting, he now sought to transgress his own work, to cross over the boundaries of walled galleries and museums. He wanted to address his work to anonymous crowds, to the unknown viewer. One starts off by modeling a figurine in clay and winds up erecting a city monument (in Miró, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 361 and 367).
The present work is a maquette for L'arc, a monumental sculpture on the grounds of the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (fig. 1).
(fig. 1) Photograph of L'Arc at Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de Vence.