Joan Miró

Galerie Maeght, Paris

Acquavella Galleries, New York

Pisa Company Ltd., Japan

Seibu Museum, Japan

Thomas Segal Gallery, Baltimore (acquired from the above)

Galerie Lelong, Paris (acquired from the above on February 15, 1999)

Private Collection

Private Collection, Switzerland

Michael Tapié, Joan Miró. Milan, 1970, no. 161

Gaston Diehl, Miró. Paris, 1974, illustrated p. 77

Pere Gimferrer, Miró: colpir sense nafrar. Barcelona, 1978, no. 177, illustrated in color p. 177

Alain Jouffroy & Joan Teixidor, Miró Sculptures, Paris, 1980, no. 57, illustrated in color p. 25

Rosa Maria Malet, Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1983, no. 124, illustrated in color

Pere A. Serra, Miró i Mallorca, Barcelona, 1984, no. 208, illustrated in color p. 158

Fundació Joan Miró, Obra de Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1988, no. 1470, illustrated in color p. 398-99

Barbara Catoir, Miró on Mallorca, Munich & New York 1995, illustrated in color p. 22

Emilio Fernández-Miro & Pilar Ortega Chapel, Joan Miró, Sculptures, Catalogue raisonné, 1928-1982, no. 106, illustrated in color p. 119

Although from time to time Miró had worked with three-dimensional forms, it was not until the 1960s that he began to work consistently in bronze. In 1967 and 1968 he created a number of sculptures, painted in strong primary colors and composed of assemblages of commonplace objects that "have an irrationality as total objects that endows them with a strongly equivocal, poetic presence" (M. Rowell, Miró, New York, 1970, p. 25).

Femme et oiseau is an assemblage of a traditional wooden pitchfork, a wooden crate, a ball and a cone, cast and painted in bright yellow, black, red and green. Miró would lay out the objects on the floor in different arrangements and sketch them until he achieved a satisfying composition. In the present work, the red ball represents femininity and fertility. The beak of the bird is represented by the green, cone-like element, and the pitchfork evokes the bird's wing or plume.

Jacques Dupin has written the following about this sculpture: "What are these figures of Miró that stand before us? Difficult to identify, despite their affirmation and because of their intensity. They cannot be pinned down to categories or catalogues. Neither men nor beasts, nor monsters nor intermediate creatures, but with something of all these. Of what "elsewhere" are they native, from what regions of the fantastic have they traveled? Their aggressive presence is a blend of the grotesque and the incongruous, of predatory fascination and the artlessness of a primitive game" (J. Dupin, "Miró as a sculptor", in Miró in Montreal, 1986, p. 31).

According to the catalogue raisonné, this work was cast in bronze in an edition of six, five of which are numbered 0/4-4/4 and one of which is unnumbered and is currently in the collection of the Fondation Maeght.