.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Working in Barcelona on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, Joan Mir executed a series of paintings, on board, copper and masonite, which he referred to as peintures sauvages. In contrast to his whimsical, poetic and often humorous canvases produced in Paris alongside fellow Surrealists, Masson, Arp and Ernst, the "savage paintings" of the mid- 1930s represent Mir's foray into a world inhabited by ominous and primitive forces.
As Jacques Dupin has explained, the imagery of these pictures was inspired by the gathering storm of World War, "beginning as early as 1934, certain works of Mir were already bearing witness, not just to some vague malaise or anxiety (everyone felt this), but to a true panic terror... . It is as though the Spanish tragedy and the Second World War as well - with all its horrors - broke out first in the works of this Catalan artist." (J. Dupin, Mir, Life and Works, 1962, p. 262-264).
Just as Picasso assembled recurring symbols from his oeuvre to compose a potent image of the physical devastation resulting from the war, Mir drew upon his lexicon of hybrid creatures and Catalan environs to give voice to the emotional battle endured by the Spanish people before the war began. Years later, Mir reflected on the appearance of monsters in his paintings.
Yet Mir's artistic response was not merely a direct reflection of the evils around him. Rather, he often intended his peintures sauvages as expressions of hope and affirmations of life instead.
Mir was deeply attracted to the prehistoric cave paintings at Altamira and elsewhere, and he tried to incorporate the same combination of shamanistic power and primitive beauty in his own pictures. Danseuse, for example, was intended to resemble the anthropomorphic figures typical of Upper Paleolithic painting and sculpture. As Sidra Stich has said of this picture, "The ghostly is also conveyed by Dancer, January 9, 1935, by Mir's total isolation of a single black figure, depicted as a vigorous but hollow-faced spirit-being or performing diviner. Here too the space around is empty, and although the image almost duplicates that of the so-named "dumbbell type dancing woman" from petroglyphs of the Cerenzuela shelter, Mir has added a frenzied tone to the arm gesticulation and body posture" (op. cit., p. 40). The phallic appendages and the agitated sense of movement give the figure an appearance of primordial and eternal energy, while the Catalan colours of the eyes gives it a nationalistic signifance.
As Jacques Dupin has explained, the imagery of these pictures was inspired by the gathering storm of World War, "beginning as early as 1934, certain works of Mir were already bearing witness, not just to some vague malaise or anxiety (everyone felt this), but to a true panic terror... . It is as though the Spanish tragedy and the Second World War as well - with all its horrors - broke out first in the works of this Catalan artist." (J. Dupin, Mir, Life and Works, 1962, p. 262-264).
Just as Picasso assembled recurring symbols from his oeuvre to compose a potent image of the physical devastation resulting from the war, Mir drew upon his lexicon of hybrid creatures and Catalan environs to give voice to the emotional battle endured by the Spanish people before the war began. Years later, Mir reflected on the appearance of monsters in his paintings.
Yet Mir's artistic response was not merely a direct reflection of the evils around him. Rather, he often intended his peintures sauvages as expressions of hope and affirmations of life instead.
Mir was deeply attracted to the prehistoric cave paintings at Altamira and elsewhere, and he tried to incorporate the same combination of shamanistic power and primitive beauty in his own pictures. Danseuse, for example, was intended to resemble the anthropomorphic figures typical of Upper Paleolithic painting and sculpture. As Sidra Stich has said of this picture, "The ghostly is also conveyed by Dancer, January 9, 1935, by Mir's total isolation of a single black figure, depicted as a vigorous but hollow-faced spirit-being or performing diviner. Here too the space around is empty, and although the image almost duplicates that of the so-named "dumbbell type dancing woman" from petroglyphs of the Cerenzuela shelter, Mir has added a frenzied tone to the arm gesticulation and body posture" (op. cit., p. 40). The phallic appendages and the agitated sense of movement give the figure an appearance of primordial and eternal energy, while the Catalan colours of the eyes gives it a nationalistic signifance.