Marrying his signature, black line, reminiscent of Japanese calligraphy, with kaleidoscopic blocks of color, Personnage dans la nuit (Lot 1031) is a striking example of Miró's mature work, featuring the characteristic iconography that occupied the artist throughout his career. Though the present work was first created in 1960 as part of a series of five abstract paintings on white grounds dated to October 27 of that year, it was only finalized and titled two decades later, incorporating bright and bold passages of coloration. By this time, the last few years of his life, Miró’s compositions had gained a level of expressive freedom motivated by a deeper sense of confidence in his craft.

This span of twenty years reveals the artist’s growth in his late opus, as the artist departed from his abstract works of the 1960s and revisited his practice of figuration popularized by his celebrated Constellation series of the 1940s. His poetic language became omnipresent in his works, encompassing figures, birds, stars, the moon, the sun, night and dusk. Commenting on this subject matter, the artist said:

Miró visited Japan in 1966 for a retrospective of his work in Tokyo and met with Japanese poets, potters, calligraphers that he had long admired from afar. He said:

The figure in the present work is delineated with such calligraphic lines, demonstrative of these spiritual and visual influences from the East.

Miró’s influence has captured artists from across generations and geographies. In 1920, Miró moved to Paris, the capital of the avant-gardes and a refuge for creation, where he would engage with many artists and evolve into an icon of modernity. After World War II, Miró continued to live in Paris on a regular basis and would become a mentor for an entire generation of artists, such as Beijing-born Zao Wou-Ki. Though Zao Wou-Ki was twenty-seven years younger than Miró, the two artists embarked on a profound friendship founded on mutual admiration and encouragement, shared influences, poetic sensibilities, visual language and fervent exchanges after meeting for the first time in the early 1950s. On Miró’s eighty-fifth birthday, Zao Wou-Ki gifted his Catalan elder a watercolour, which he dedicated: “To Joan Miró, the youngest among us all.”

He first encountered the work of the Abstract Expressionists in New York in 1947 and would later recount the experience akin to ‘a blow to the solar plexus.’ A number of young painters, including Jackson Pollock, credited Miró’s work as inspiration for their gestural, paint-splattered canvases. Miró’s interaction with Taiwanese artist Richard Lin also sheds light on his continued relevance for the generation that followed his own. In the late 1960s, Miró encountered Richard Lin’s works at the Marlborough Gallery and was tremendously impressed. Subsequently, he visited Lin’s studio, only to discover that Lin had long admired his work and had bought a book on Miró’s art by the critic Clement Greenberg in 1952. Miró famously proclaimed: ‘In the world of white, no one can exceed you.’

A lyrical array of form and color, the present composition is an oneiric image that straddles between figuration and abstraction. Encapsulating Miró’s oeuvre within a single composition, Personnage dans la nuit reconciles his early embodiments of 'anti-painting,' his wistful, starry iconography, later forays into abstraction and the final resolution of saturated color against negative space.

《星夜漫步》（拍品編號1031）是米羅在晚年繪畫的傑出佳作，展現其嫻熟遒勁的技法以及在具象與抽象藝術邊緣遊走的風格，畫中並未繪畫太多物像，這也是其創作生涯後期作品的特色。對米羅而言，人、鳥兒、星星、月亮、太陽、黑夜、黃昏可以組成最富詩意的語言。女子與鳥的組合，最早出現在1917年一批較寫實的作品中。直至一九四O年代以人、鳥和星星為主題的《星座》系列出現後，這些元素成為了其作品的主要題材。關於這些題材，米羅這樣說︰「它可以是狗，可以是女人或任何事物，我不在乎。但當我畫畫時，我的腦海浮現了女人或鳥兒，而且是非常實在的女人和鳥兒。然後我就自行發揮了。」（引述胡安・米羅和喬治・雷拉德，《Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves》，巴黎，1977年，頁128）。

《星夜漫步》的色彩與負空間平衡和諧，原畫創作於1960年，為一組五幅的抽象畫之一，白底上還標注了同年的10月27日。本作於1980年11月13日定稿；根據雅克・杜龐編纂的專題目錄及後來在作品背面所加的款識，本作題為《星夜漫步》（Personnage dans la nuit）。這幅畫展現了藝術家晚年在創作方面的成長，也反映他過去所受的種種影響。從本作可見，米羅逐步捨棄六十年代精簡抽象的構圖，回歸《星座》系列較為具象的物象形態。

二十世紀四十年代後期，米羅接觸了抽象表現主義藝術家的作品，深受他們的新技法吸引，但首先影響新一代藝術家的卻是米羅的作品，以及超現實主義藝術家所重視的自動主義創作方法，也就是強調抑制意識、自由聯想的創造力。當時不少年輕藝術家，例如塞・托姆布雷和傑克森・波拉克都視米羅為靈感來源，並創作出不羈奔放的作品。托姆布雷的精彩鉅作《荷蘭室內景》創作於1962年，白色基底上佈滿蠟筆勁疾打圈的筆觸，加上隨意點塗的色彩，顯然與本作的前一個版本十分相似，而且作品標題也與米羅在1928年創作的一個系列同名。

1920年，米羅移居巴黎，這裡是當時世界的前衛藝術之都，吸引許多藝術家停駐。米羅在巴黎與許多藝術家互通往來，經過一番雕琢磨練後，他自己亦成為了現代藝術界的重要一員。第二次世界大戰結束後，米羅繼續常住巴黎，成為後來一整代藝術家的指引明燈，包括北京出生的趙無極。雖然趙無極比米羅年輕二十七歲，但他們自五十年代初相識就已惺惺相惜，建立起深厚友情，他們的作品更反映出兩人相互影響的詩意和視覺語言。米羅八十五歲生日時，趙無極給這位西班牙前輩送上一張水彩畫，並致意「敬贈我們之中最年輕的胡安・米羅。」

六十年代末，米羅在馬勃洛畫廊首次見到林壽宇的作品，留下深刻印象。其後，他親自拜訪林氏的工作室，發現原來林壽宇早已對自己的作品深印在心，更在1952年買了一本由藝評人克萊門・格林伯格撰寫關於他的著作，米羅對後世藝術家的影響可見一斑。米羅非常欣賞林壽宇的藝術，更留下一句流傳至今的讚語︰「在白色的世界裡，你無人能及。」

本作濃縮了米羅的重要創作元素，各種形狀和色彩展現出悠揚的情感，至於他年輕時提出的「反繪畫」主張亦不再露出鋒芒。畫中的星星清雅利落，後來演變成極為抽象的形態，最終成為明亮白底上一片片艷麗矚目的色彩。「我很難形容自己的作品，因為它總是在幻覺出現的狀態下完成，因主觀或客觀的衝擊而出現，我是無法控制的。至於表達方式上，我愈來愈以達到最強的清晰度、力量和柔韌的侵略性為目的，展示直達靈魂深處的實在情感」（引述A. 博梅勒編，《胡安・米羅1917–1934》（展覽圖錄），龐畢度中心，巴黎，2004年，頁366）。