Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired from the artist)

Frank Perls Gallery, Beverly Hills

Reverand & Mrs. James L. McLane, Los Angeles

Sale: Christie's, New York, November 14, 1990, lot 40

Acquired at the above sale

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Group Show, 1946

Los Angeles, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art & New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Joan Miró, 1959, no. 94 (not exhibited in New York)

Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, New York, 1962, no. 695, illustrated p. 553 (as dating from October 23, 1946)

Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné. Paintings, Volume III: 1942-1955, Paris, 2001, no. 795, illustrated in color p. 107

 

This work is in very good condition. Original canvas. Under UV light, there is no evidence of retouching. The corners are very slightly rubbed otherwise; this work is in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

When Miró painted this canvas in 1946, he was at the height of his international celebrity.  The previous year, the New York dealer Pierre Matisse had exhibited the artist's famous wartime series of Constellations to critical praise.  Demand for Miró's work in the United States had become so great that in August 1946 Matisse offered to purchase the artist's entire production of 1942-46 and agreed to finance him for the next two years.  Better yet, Miró was invited to the United States to create what would be his first public commission - a mural for the Terrace Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati. 

What the public, his dealer and his critics recognized in Miró's paintings from this era was a certain zeal and optimism that was in sharp contrast to the somber mood of post-war Europe.  Miró was in fact responding to that very mood, and he expressed his determination to persevere in his art.  "I am entirely committed to risking it all," Miró had written to Matisse in June 1945.  "Either I find a way to live like men of my age (fifty-two years) from the preceding generation - Picasso, Matisse, Braque - or I find a way to settle my debts ... [and go] to live in Montroig, where I will continue to work with the same passion and enthusiasm as always - which constitutes a need for me and my reason for living .... Excuse me for speaking to you in this tone, but life has been too hard for me these past years for me to do otherwise.  I have to plan my future in a clear and courageous way, one that is worthy of my age" (quoted in Joan Miró (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1993,  p. 337). 

Femmes et oiseau dans la nuit is one of the compositions which Pierre Matisse and the public found so refreshing in the aftermath of these hard times.  This jewel-like picture is populated by Miró's Surrealist characters who are recognized easily for who they are - women cocooned by the night sky.  Miró gave up his practice of assigning poetic or elusive titles to his pictures as he had done in the 1930s, and now he favored more straight-forward classifications for his work.  Women, birds, stars and moons festooned these pictures, but the artist did not compromise his imaginative impulses when rendering these forms.   In fact, it was these compositions from the the mid-1940s that would inspire the creative production of the Abstract Expressionist artist Arshile Gorky in New York.  After his trip to America in 1947, Miró himself would respond to the style of the Abstract Expressionists and begin a series of large-formatted paintings.  During these years he made a virtue of these small-formatted, intensely colorful canvases, with their splendor and precision.

Jacques Dupin offered the following comments concerning the artist's production from 1946:  "Although the handwriting will tend to become freer and invention more flexible, nonetheless his works of 1946 follow the lines established in the paintings of the two preceding years...  The artist concentrates on his figures and animals, now making them more and more unlike each other, even odder and more humorous in character ... (a) renewed passion for artistic materials produces grounds of great richness and animation, such as we did not find in the large canvases of 1945"  (J. Dupin, Joan Miró:  His Life and Work, New York, 1962, p. 382).