Joan Miró

Private Collection, Mexico (acquired directly from the artist and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 8, 2001, lot 291)
Private Collection, New York (acquired at the above sale)
The Piccadilly Gallery, London 
Acquired from the above in November 2002 

Executed on cream colored laid paper. The sheet is t-hinged to a mat at the upper corners on the verso. Artist pinholes in all four corners at the center of each edge. There are scattered spots of tape residue along the edges of the verso. Apart from some very minor time-darkening to the sheet the work is in excellent condition.
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In this calligraphically powerful composition from 1958, Miró explores the subversive potential of his established lexicon of signs and symbols. His highly graphic rendering pays little regard to defining its titular subject, which is purely a vehicle for the artist's emphatic application of black paint. The gesture is not unlike the tag of an urban graffiti artist, where the economized, bold mark is the unmistakable calling card of a complex artistic persona.

Jacques Dupin touches upon this very point in his discussion of Miró's paintings from the the late 1950s and early 1960s: "In some cases, the artist stressed the power, the brutality of a summary, rough graphism, born of a single gesture and closely related to graffiti. In other cases, a few economical, light lines serve as counterpoint to the free play of splashes and spots of color. Seemingly contradictory, both approaches reflect a mistrust of the sign, a desire to eliminated calculated, fixed forms from his vocabulary so as to gain in spontaneity, directness, and a purer revelation of the act of painting" (Jacques Dupin, Miró, New York, 2003, p. 303).

This work was executed in 1958 for the cover of the book Los Encuentros by Vicente Aleixandre, the Spanish Nobel Prize-winning poet.