Joan Miró

Private Collection, Spain (a gift from the artist on 23rd July 1946)
By descent from the above to the present owner

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró. Catalogue Raisonné. Drawings 1938-1959, Paris, 2010, vol. II, no. 1078, illustrated in colour p. 144

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down. The corners are rounded. There is a minute crease to the lower right corner and there are some tape remnants to the upper edge of the verso due to previous mounting. Otherwise, this work is in overall very good condition. Colours: overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue, though slightly fresher in the original.
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By 1946, Miró had fully developed his utterly personal and unique visual language. The present work is a delightful amalgamation of his iconography and demonstrates his heavy linear technique that is so integral to his aesthetic. The biomorphic, and in this case anthropomorphic, forms of the soft edged oneiric figures in this work reveal his association with the Surrealist movement and members of the Parisian avant-garde such as Jean Arp and Yves Tanguy. The removal of extraneous detail in both colour and form was essential in developing this new visual language. As the artist himself explained: 'My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colours. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.'

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Miró, was determined to demonstrate that Europe still had a rich and thriving culture despite the ravages of war. In a letter to Miró from August of 1946 the New York dealer Pierre Matisse reveals how desperate he was to comply with these aims by exhibiting a number of specifically commissioned canvases in America: ‘I need more than ever those canvases in order to complete your exhibition, which I want to do as soon as possible’ (quoted in Pierre Matisse and his Artists (exhibition catalogue), The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 2002, p. 209). It seems likely that the present work played a role in corralling Miró’s thought process while preparing for this exceptionally important exhibition project, and indeed their backgrounds are executed in the same light tones that are evident here. Miró would no doubt have been extremely keen to ensure that this series of works revealed the best of his art and the present work is testament to the integral role works on paper played as an avenue for his creative exploration.  

In describing Miró’s style at this time, Jacques Dupin throws further light onto the present  work: ‘We find the confirmation and the continuing development of an art which becomes progressively less capricious, less anxious, and more self-assured. All the paintings of this year are characterized by the abandonment of the purely rhythmic elements and signs that abounded in 1945. The artist concentrates on his figures and animals, now making them more and more unlike each other, even odder and more humorous in character ‘ also remarking upon how a  ‘renewed passion for artistic materials produces grounds of great richness and animation' (Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, London, 1962, p. 382).