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Lot Essay
"The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see the crescent of the moon or the sun in an immense sky. In my paintings, as a matter of fact, there are tiny shapes in great empty spaces" (Miró: I work like a gardener, cited in exh. cat., "Joan Miró", 1893-1993, Fundaió Joan Miró, Barcelona 1993, p. 423).
Miró's paintings of 1954 are obsessed with the theme of the night sky. L'allégresse de la fillette par le jeu des constellations expresses the rythm and fluctuations of a night sky full of stars in conjunction with the figure of a woman on the coarse canvas ground that Miró found encouraged a more direct and spontaneous use of his brush.
Unlike Miró's famous "Constellation" series of the early 1940's many of the "Constellation" paintings Miró executed in 1954 are heavier and often more ominous. L'allégresse de la fillette par le jeu des constellations is unlike these other 1954 "Constellation" paintings in that it is essentially a playful painting in both its execution and its subject matter.
Miró's elegant calligraphic brushstrokes seem to stain rather than paint the surface of the canvas and together they form a gestural play of Prussian blue shapes against the scuffed abstract patterning of the background that unites the image of the young girl with the features of the night sky. This sense of playfulness is reinforced by the sparkling jewel-like dots of white with which Miró highlights certain areas of the canvas. As Jacques Dupin has written of these works: "It is as though his brush alone, heavily dipped in paint, were traveling of itself without memory, guide, or rules, seeking and finding its own path, anxious only to capture and transmit the pulsations of the subsoil" (Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró: Life and Work, London 1962, p. 442).
Miró's paintings of 1954 are obsessed with the theme of the night sky. L'allégresse de la fillette par le jeu des constellations expresses the rythm and fluctuations of a night sky full of stars in conjunction with the figure of a woman on the coarse canvas ground that Miró found encouraged a more direct and spontaneous use of his brush.
Unlike Miró's famous "Constellation" series of the early 1940's many of the "Constellation" paintings Miró executed in 1954 are heavier and often more ominous. L'allégresse de la fillette par le jeu des constellations is unlike these other 1954 "Constellation" paintings in that it is essentially a playful painting in both its execution and its subject matter.
Miró's elegant calligraphic brushstrokes seem to stain rather than paint the surface of the canvas and together they form a gestural play of Prussian blue shapes against the scuffed abstract patterning of the background that unites the image of the young girl with the features of the night sky. This sense of playfulness is reinforced by the sparkling jewel-like dots of white with which Miró highlights certain areas of the canvas. As Jacques Dupin has written of these works: "It is as though his brush alone, heavily dipped in paint, were traveling of itself without memory, guide, or rules, seeking and finding its own path, anxious only to capture and transmit the pulsations of the subsoil" (Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró: Life and Work, London 1962, p. 442).