Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owners in 1967

London, Tate Gallery & Zurich, Kunsthaus, Joan Miró, 1964, no. 204

Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, New York, 1962, no. 889, illustrated in colour p. 463
Margit Rowell, Joan Miró, peinture = poésie, Paris, 1976, illustrated p. 90
Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue Raisonné. Paintings, Paris, 2001, vol. IV, no. 1059, illustrated in colour p. 50

With the exception of a few small pictures executed in 1955, Miró stopped painting from 1954 until 1959 and during this time his work focused on prints and particularly on ceramics, culminating in the completion of the monumental Mur du soleil and Mur de la lune for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 1957 and the mural for Harvard University in 1960. The present work, alongside its companion L’Aube I/II, was among the first canvases that Miró executed after his return to the medium of painting in the autumn of 1959, and its abstract mode and spontaneous application of paint herald a new direction in his work. This was a time of great international acclaim for Miró’: only a few months earlier a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

By the time Miró painted this work in 1959, he had already become acquainted with the new techniques and aesthetic agenda of the Abstract Expressionists. He first saw their work in New York in 1947, and the experience, the artist would later recall, was like ‘a blow to the solar plexus.’ Several young painters, including Jackson Pollock, were crediting Miró as their inspiration for their wild, paint-splattered canvases. Miró was both flattered and a bit awed by the acknowledgement, not knowing immediately what to think of it. But in the years that followed he created works that responded to the enthusiasm of this younger generation of American painters. The spontaneity of the present composition, and particularly the white pigment dripped directly onto the canvas, reflect the mutual influence of Miró and the Abstract Expressionists.

It was during this time that Miró moved to a grand new studio in Palma de Mallorca, designed by his friend, the architect José Luis Sert. Jacques Dupin explained one of the consequences of Miró’s move to a new studio: ‘he was obliged to unpack and store a large number of canvases, and an even greater quantity of drawings, projects, and sketchbooks accumulated during all preceding years. He thus had to look back over forty years of work, and the effect of this was to make Miró aware that he must break away from the forms he had previously developed. Once again he must set out on an exploration of the unknown. […] There was a resurgence of the iconoclastic fury of his youth’ (J. Dupin, op. cit., 1962, p. 478).