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Lot Essay
In early fall 1936 events in Spain brought a halt to the measured cadences of Miró's working patterns. Although the Spanish Civil War had begun in earnest in the middle of that summer, Miró scarcely mentions it in his frequent letters to Pierre Matisse. Yet, by late November, during the course of a visit to Paris, the situation had become so personally critical, that Miró found himself in involuntary exile. For approximately the next four years he, with his wife and daughter, was forced to improvise ways of coping with the disruption of accustomed living arrangements in Paris.
In March 1937 Miró had moved into the tower studio on the boulevard Auguste-Blanqui in Paris. In this year Miró created two masterpieces of a poetically conceived realism: Still life with Old Shoe and his monumental Reaper (Catalan Peasant in Revolt) which, with Picasso's Guernica, represented the Spanish Republic at the Paris World's Fair of 1937.
With the figures' raised arms in despair and its colouring in the Catalan colours yellow and red, "Deux Personnages" should be understood not only as man's revolt against suppression but also as a symbol for mankind's tragic struggle in any war. Shortly after Miró had first realized that a return to Catalonia might have to be indefinitely postponed, he had written: "I find myself uprooted, and I long for my own country." In January 1938 Miró had also exhibited in the celebrated Surrealist exhibition at the Beaux-Arts Gallery, Paris, which had been organised by André Breton and Paul Eluard.
Jaques Dupin writes about Miró's work in 1938: "Certain figures have a massive appearance, their limbs atrophy and their heads become as tiny as the heads of ants with long hair that sticks out as stiff as spikes." It is the gigantism of these skinny figures against a backdrop of an open space, lit by a black sun, which makes Deux Personnages such a powerful, surrealist image.
The present work is dedicated to Ruthven Todd, the English art critic and surrealist poet. It is likely that Todd first met Miró at the International Surrealist show held at Burlington House, London in 1936. Ruthven Todd worked at the Zwemmer Gallery, London and was probably responsible for the Miró exhibition held there in May 1937.
In March 1937 Miró had moved into the tower studio on the boulevard Auguste-Blanqui in Paris. In this year Miró created two masterpieces of a poetically conceived realism: Still life with Old Shoe and his monumental Reaper (Catalan Peasant in Revolt) which, with Picasso's Guernica, represented the Spanish Republic at the Paris World's Fair of 1937.
With the figures' raised arms in despair and its colouring in the Catalan colours yellow and red, "Deux Personnages" should be understood not only as man's revolt against suppression but also as a symbol for mankind's tragic struggle in any war. Shortly after Miró had first realized that a return to Catalonia might have to be indefinitely postponed, he had written: "I find myself uprooted, and I long for my own country." In January 1938 Miró had also exhibited in the celebrated Surrealist exhibition at the Beaux-Arts Gallery, Paris, which had been organised by André Breton and Paul Eluard.
Jaques Dupin writes about Miró's work in 1938: "Certain figures have a massive appearance, their limbs atrophy and their heads become as tiny as the heads of ants with long hair that sticks out as stiff as spikes." It is the gigantism of these skinny figures against a backdrop of an open space, lit by a black sun, which makes Deux Personnages such a powerful, surrealist image.
The present work is dedicated to Ruthven Todd, the English art critic and surrealist poet. It is likely that Todd first met Miró at the International Surrealist show held at Burlington House, London in 1936. Ruthven Todd worked at the Zwemmer Gallery, London and was probably responsible for the Miró exhibition held there in May 1937.