Fig. 1 “Miró” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1941-42

M iró executed Peinture on 8 September 1947, during his first trip to the United States. This trip came at the height of the artist’s international celebrity and on the heels of some of his most significant American exhibitions—namely, his first major retrospective (held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1941, see fig. 1) and two major shows of his Constellation series (staged by Pierre Matisse in New York in 1945).

On the reverse of Peinture, Miró inscribed “A mi amigo Alonso diciéndole adiós en New York y hasta la vista, en la Argentina,” or “To my friend Alonso saying goodbye in New York and until next time in Argentina.” Indeed, this charming and emblematic painting is one of the last works Miró executed during his time in New York, before returning home in October 1947. It possesses his iconic star motif and the recurring subject of painter and muse. What appears to be spray paint on the canvas speaks to the rich tradition of street art Miró so admired in New York, and the coexistence of figurative and abstract elements is characteristic of his output at this time

Fig. 2 Mural for the Terrace Plaza Hotel, 1947

Miró’s unique ability to depict figuration and abstraction in harmony also played out in his mural for Cincinnati’s Terrace Plaza Hotel, a commission which precipitated the artist’s trip to the United States in 1947 (see fig. 2). As the first postwar hotel in the country, the Terrace Plaza possessed innovative features like a sky lobby and housed the art of modern masters such as Alexander Calder, Saul Steinberg and Jim Davis.

To make his monumental contribution to the hotel, Miró set up a studio in New York, where he stayed from February to October of 1947. During this time, Miró did more than just work on the mural. He produced a dynamic body of work that included Peinture, and he was brought into the fold of the New York avant garde.

Fig. 3 Willem de Kooning, Valentine, 1947, oil and enamel on paper on board, Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2022 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The timing of Miró’s trip to New York could not have been more critical, as it directly coincided with the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in the city. Miró was well received by the movement’s pioneers, and he deeply influenced the radical, non-figurative and monumental output of artists like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. De Kooning’s Valentine, for example, shares the palette and abstracted figuration of Peinture, executed in the same year (see fig. 3).