Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Private Collection, New England (acquired from the above and sold: Sotheby’s, New York, May 12, 1993, lot 313)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue Raisonne, Paintings, vol. III, Paris, 2001, no. 727, illustrated in color p. 59

Canvas is not lined or fixed to a stretcher, but rather affixed to a mount on the reverse along the left and right edges and at several points along the top and bottom edges. A close inspection reveals a few artist's pinholes at regular intervals along the edges with some associated spots of oxidation. There is some minor shrinkage in the red pigment. Under UV light: some original pigments fluoresce but no inpainting is apparent.
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.

Personnages, oiseau, etoiles is one of the compositions which Miró completed in the late years of the war. Whimsical in its subject as well as its horizontal format, the picture is populated by Miró's Surrealist characters that came to dominate his art—birds and figures of women aloft in 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 their forms. In fact, it was these compositions from 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.

Miró would have completed the present work in Barcelona in 1944, not long after setting up his studio in the house where he was born. He had spent the duration of the war prior to this period in Palma de Mallorca, where he completed his celebrated Constellations series as homage to the brilliant night sky above the Mediterranean. Miró continued to incorporate elements of this theme into his production for the next several decades, concentrating on the elegance of calligraphic lines punctuated by bursts of primary colors, but it is in the compositions from the 1940s that this aesthetic is at its freshest and most inspired.