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Lot Essay
“During these tragic years, I have continued working every day, and this has helped me keep my balance—my work has kept me on my feet; otherwise I would have gone under; it would have been a catastrophe.” – Joan Miró (letter to P. Loeb, 30 August 1945; quoted in M. Rowell, p. 197).
In 1939, Joan Miró published a statement in the avant-garde journal, Cahiers d’Art, in which he boldly proclaimed the power of art in times of hardship and fear. Faced with the harrowing reality of war in his home country of Spain, and the rapidly worsening political tensions that were then sweeping across Europe, Miró’s response was not only timely, but also a defiant reminder of the importance of continuing to create in times of threat. “The outer world, the world of contemporary events, always has an influence on the painter—that goes without saying. If the interplay of lines and colors does not expose the inner drama of the creator, then it is nothing more than bourgeois entertainment. The forms expressed by an individual who is part of society must reveal the movement of a soul trying to escape the present, which is particularly ignoble today, in order to approach new realities, to offer other men the possibility of rising above the present” (“Statement,” in Cahiers d’Art, Paris, April-May, 1939; quoted in Rowell, p. 166).
The trio of drawings from this distinguished family collection offer a rare, concentrated glimpse into Miró’s astounding creativity and perseverance during the Second World War, as he continued to work in the shadow of the conflict. Created over the course of just two and a half weeks in October and November 1942, together they reveal the multiple threads that occupied and overlapped within the artist’s imagination during this period, simultaneously harking back to the configuration of forms that had populated his famed series of Constellation paintings of 1940-1941, and boldly pushing into new realms of creative experimentation.
Following the outbreak of the war, and anticipating the occupation off France by Germany, Miró and his family returned to Spain in July 1940. Over the course of the following five years, he lived and worked largely in isolation, cut off from the art world and his network of painter friends and acquaintances in Paris. Though plagued with anxiety about the conflict and his ever-worsening financial circumstances, these years spent working intensively on his own, exploring his meandering thoughts without interference, allowed Miró to reach a new level of pictorial maturity and self-confidence in his abilities. As Jacques Dupin has explained, the array of watercolors, drawings, pastels and gouaches that emerged as a result of this forced break were “characterized by a freedom of invention and marvelous effortlessness” (Dupin, p. 257).
Common shapes and forms appear across the three different works offered in this sale, conjuring a cast of amorphous figures that appear at once familiar and distinctly otherworldly, their bodies an amalgamation of geometric and flowing, curvilinear shapes. Showcasing the endless variety and inventiveness of Miró’s pictorial vocabulary, these three compositions also reveal the importance of his ongoing explorations of materiality in his works on paper. Though wartime restrictions had left him short of many materials, these drawings are nevertheless filled with the same intensity of expression and lyrical approach to form as his most complex paintings in oil, created using an array of contrasting techniques and media. Varying types of inks, pencils and pigments were combined within a single sheet, creating intriguing juxtapositions and unexpected correspondences that fed Miró’s fervent imagination and prompted new directions of thinking in his work.
“I will make my work emerge naturally, like the song of a bird or the music of Mozart, with no apparent effort, but thought out at length and worked out from within.” – Joan Miró (quoted in M. Rowell, Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1986, pp. 185-186).
In Joan Miró’s enigmatic Femme, oiseau, étoiles, created at the very end of October 1942, the artist conjures a whimsical, multi-eyed character through the flowing lines of his pencil. Occupying the very center of the sheet, the creature’s soft, rounded body is layered with detail, in which eyes, crescent moons, and pincer-like forms appear in delicate lines and softly shaded segments, while its array of limbs shoot outwards at unexpected angles. As the title suggests, the work explores several of Miró’s favorite motifs—the woman, bird and star, poetic ephemera from his own memories and imagination—which he deployed in a seemingly endless series of imaginative combinations, conjuring strange theatrical scenes that remain just outside our understanding.
Describing this experimental side of Miró’s work during these years, Jacques Dupin emphasised the variety of materials that he played with in works such as Femme, oiseau, étoiles: “Successively, on the same sheet, black pencil and India ink, watercolor and pastel, gouache and thinned oil paint, colored crayons and, occasionally, even materials as unexpected as blackberry jam are employed, and their contrast and similarities exploited to the full, and not infrequently exploited beyond their capacities… He did not subject the materials to some antecedently decided program; rather, what he tried to do is to liberate them, to make them speak. He made close observations of the life of the materials and was attentive to their slightest suggestions” (Miró, New York, 1993, p. 260).
In Femme, oiseau, étoiles, the actual process of creation has changed—where the artist’s famed series of Constellations from 1940-1941 were controlled and meticulous, here the artist has returned to a more spontaneous means of execution. The figures are placed against a soft, subtly variegated reddish-pink ground of watercolor that intensifies at different points within the sheet, the pigment becoming more saturated and vibrant, before giving way to ethereal, almost translucent passages in which the natural color of the sheet can be seen below. Miró himself explained of this time in his career: “Now I worked with the least possible control. At any rate in the first place, the drawing” (quoted in R. Penrose, Miró, London, 1995, p. 108). The movement of the artist’s hand through the watercolor remain visible in meandering path of the washes of color across the sheet, recording the path of his brush as it wandered across the page. As such, Femme, oiseau, étoiles reveals the added physicality that Miró brought to the process of drawing during these years, imbuing his works on paper with a bold new freshness and expressive power.
In 1939, Joan Miró published a statement in the avant-garde journal, Cahiers d’Art, in which he boldly proclaimed the power of art in times of hardship and fear. Faced with the harrowing reality of war in his home country of Spain, and the rapidly worsening political tensions that were then sweeping across Europe, Miró’s response was not only timely, but also a defiant reminder of the importance of continuing to create in times of threat. “The outer world, the world of contemporary events, always has an influence on the painter—that goes without saying. If the interplay of lines and colors does not expose the inner drama of the creator, then it is nothing more than bourgeois entertainment. The forms expressed by an individual who is part of society must reveal the movement of a soul trying to escape the present, which is particularly ignoble today, in order to approach new realities, to offer other men the possibility of rising above the present” (“Statement,” in Cahiers d’Art, Paris, April-May, 1939; quoted in Rowell, p. 166).
The trio of drawings from this distinguished family collection offer a rare, concentrated glimpse into Miró’s astounding creativity and perseverance during the Second World War, as he continued to work in the shadow of the conflict. Created over the course of just two and a half weeks in October and November 1942, together they reveal the multiple threads that occupied and overlapped within the artist’s imagination during this period, simultaneously harking back to the configuration of forms that had populated his famed series of Constellation paintings of 1940-1941, and boldly pushing into new realms of creative experimentation.
Following the outbreak of the war, and anticipating the occupation off France by Germany, Miró and his family returned to Spain in July 1940. Over the course of the following five years, he lived and worked largely in isolation, cut off from the art world and his network of painter friends and acquaintances in Paris. Though plagued with anxiety about the conflict and his ever-worsening financial circumstances, these years spent working intensively on his own, exploring his meandering thoughts without interference, allowed Miró to reach a new level of pictorial maturity and self-confidence in his abilities. As Jacques Dupin has explained, the array of watercolors, drawings, pastels and gouaches that emerged as a result of this forced break were “characterized by a freedom of invention and marvelous effortlessness” (Dupin, p. 257).
Common shapes and forms appear across the three different works offered in this sale, conjuring a cast of amorphous figures that appear at once familiar and distinctly otherworldly, their bodies an amalgamation of geometric and flowing, curvilinear shapes. Showcasing the endless variety and inventiveness of Miró’s pictorial vocabulary, these three compositions also reveal the importance of his ongoing explorations of materiality in his works on paper. Though wartime restrictions had left him short of many materials, these drawings are nevertheless filled with the same intensity of expression and lyrical approach to form as his most complex paintings in oil, created using an array of contrasting techniques and media. Varying types of inks, pencils and pigments were combined within a single sheet, creating intriguing juxtapositions and unexpected correspondences that fed Miró’s fervent imagination and prompted new directions of thinking in his work.
“I will make my work emerge naturally, like the song of a bird or the music of Mozart, with no apparent effort, but thought out at length and worked out from within.” – Joan Miró (quoted in M. Rowell, Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1986, pp. 185-186).
In Joan Miró’s enigmatic Femme, oiseau, étoiles, created at the very end of October 1942, the artist conjures a whimsical, multi-eyed character through the flowing lines of his pencil. Occupying the very center of the sheet, the creature’s soft, rounded body is layered with detail, in which eyes, crescent moons, and pincer-like forms appear in delicate lines and softly shaded segments, while its array of limbs shoot outwards at unexpected angles. As the title suggests, the work explores several of Miró’s favorite motifs—the woman, bird and star, poetic ephemera from his own memories and imagination—which he deployed in a seemingly endless series of imaginative combinations, conjuring strange theatrical scenes that remain just outside our understanding.
Describing this experimental side of Miró’s work during these years, Jacques Dupin emphasised the variety of materials that he played with in works such as Femme, oiseau, étoiles: “Successively, on the same sheet, black pencil and India ink, watercolor and pastel, gouache and thinned oil paint, colored crayons and, occasionally, even materials as unexpected as blackberry jam are employed, and their contrast and similarities exploited to the full, and not infrequently exploited beyond their capacities… He did not subject the materials to some antecedently decided program; rather, what he tried to do is to liberate them, to make them speak. He made close observations of the life of the materials and was attentive to their slightest suggestions” (Miró, New York, 1993, p. 260).
In Femme, oiseau, étoiles, the actual process of creation has changed—where the artist’s famed series of Constellations from 1940-1941 were controlled and meticulous, here the artist has returned to a more spontaneous means of execution. The figures are placed against a soft, subtly variegated reddish-pink ground of watercolor that intensifies at different points within the sheet, the pigment becoming more saturated and vibrant, before giving way to ethereal, almost translucent passages in which the natural color of the sheet can be seen below. Miró himself explained of this time in his career: “Now I worked with the least possible control. At any rate in the first place, the drawing” (quoted in R. Penrose, Miró, London, 1995, p. 108). The movement of the artist’s hand through the watercolor remain visible in meandering path of the washes of color across the sheet, recording the path of his brush as it wandered across the page. As such, Femme, oiseau, étoiles reveals the added physicality that Miró brought to the process of drawing during these years, imbuing his works on paper with a bold new freshness and expressive power.