胡安·米羅

Galerie Maeght, Paris (acquired from the artist)

Gilbert Hart Kinney, Washington D.C.

Marlborough Gallery, New York

Bruxelles, Palais des Beaux Arts, Joan Miró, 1956, no. 69

Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, Joan Miró, 1956, no. 84, illustrated in the catalogue

Baden-Baden, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Joan Miró, 1956, no. 57

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Miró, 1959, no. 103, illustrated in the catalogue

The Los Angeles County Museum, Miró, 1959, no. 110

Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Joan Miró, 1966, no. 97, illustrated in the catalogue

Kyoto, Museum of Modern Art & Tokyo, National Museum of Modern Art, Joan Miró, 1966, no. 81, illustrated in the catalogue

Knokke-Heist, Casino Communal, Joan Miró, 1971, no. 39, illustrated in the catalogue

Jacques Prévert & Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Joan Miró, Paris, 1956, p. 192

Eduard Hüttinger, Miró, Bern, 1957, no. 50

Walter Erben, Joan Miró, Munich, 1969, illustrated pl. VIII

Jacques Dupin, Miró, Paris, 1961, no. 852, p. 425

Yves Bonnefoy, Miró, Paris, 1964, no. 57

Margit Rowell, Joan Miró, Peinture=Poésie, La Différence, Paris, 1976, illustrated in color p. 88

Guy Weelen, Miró, Paris, 1990, no. 85, p. 121

Pere Gimferrer, Les arrels de Miró, Barcelona, 1993, no. 849, illustrated p. 381

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainland, Miró. Catalogue raisonné. Paintings 1942-55, Paris, 2001, no. 966, illustrated p. 232

Jacques Dupin, Miró, Paris, 2012, discussed p. 300

Very good condition. Original canvas. Under UV, there is some scattered retouching to the extreme edges.
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The stunning L'espoir nous revient par la fuite des constellation is one of three "direct expression" paintings that Miró completed in 1954 at his studio in Montroig.  This picture, along with Le Ciel entrebaillé nous rend l'espoir and La Chevelure défaite à la fuite des constellations, are characterized by their large format and unhindered application of paint, sometimes by unorthodox means.  Slapping the canvas with a painted hand, the artist unleashes his intensity and physically connects with his work in a manner that was unseen in his paintings of earlier years.  Writing about these picture, Jacques Dupin noted that "his physical vehemence steadies his line, subdues the vibration of colors, and touches us more keenly.  The atmosphere is murkier in these works, for they have been born of the night and are charged with its intense vapors and its mystery" (J. Dupin, Miró, 2012, p. 298).

The title of the present work, which translates as Hope comes back to us as the Constellations Flee, references Miró's celebrated Constellations series from over a decade earlier and also alludes to an atmosphere of uncertainty amidst the bejeweled night sky.  Dupin explains that Miró's uses his color choices to animate the picture: "The brush has plainly been dipped in some very fluid paint to give us this animated red-earth background, a sort of warm mud tinged with blood and iron.  The same whitish trail of smoke reappears, but it is not lighter in texture, more impalpable; the swirling half circle it forms is extended by big fleecy black dots that double back on themselves.  This vast serpentine movement is held in check by three unmoving black ellipses which seem to come out of the canvas like nocturnal suns.  Meanwhile there is something faintly human about the heavy black sign, suggesting stairs, at the top.  Neither exactly rising or falling, it sustains home, and once more imprints of hands are incorporated.  This canvas is less dramatic than the last, but perhaps more disturbing.  What it discloses is not a wall, but some muddy  space glimpsed in the dim light of a cave; what we have here is a play of dank vapors, shifting gleams of light, and searing imprints of the primordial mud" (ibid., p. 300).

With  the present work and the other two canvases in this series, Miró was offering a challenge to the art world at large.  Rather than trying to appeal to a rarified audience with pristine or finely detailed compostions, Miró was now attempting to engage the popular imagination through unfettered expressiveness.  Unlike the refined Constellations pictures that had brought him immense critical acclaim in the 1940s, these pictures were a bold new venture for the artist, with their grandiose format and rigorous application of paint.  Dupin explained Miró's approach to these pictures by discussing the artist's "expansion tendency," or his desire to break new ground with his art.

The first owner of this picture was the Washington D.C.-based philanthropist and art collector Gilbert Hart Kinney.  Kinney served as trustee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Archives of American Art, the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery, and is presently Chair Emeritus of the American Federation of the Arts.