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Lot Essay
During World War II Miró was living in isolation, dividing his time between Barcelona, Montroig and Palma. The scarcity of materials during this time compelled him to work on small canvases or, primarily, to paint in gouache or watercolor on paper. Perhaps the culmination of his oeuvre up to this point was the execution of the Constellations series, which consisted of 23 works produced between January 1940 and September 1941. Few other major works were executed during this period as Miró devoted himself to noting down ideas and projects for future work in his notebooks. He did not take up painting again until 1944-1945 when the ideas and thought processes of the War years and the dynamics of the Constellations would finally burst forth in a series of large canvases executed in an assured and fully mature style.
The works on paper of 1942-1943 saw the genesis of the subjects that he was to paint in his 1945-1946 canvases. "These works on paper are all variations on a single theme, Woman-Bird-Star. This serves as title for a great many of them, while others are only slightly modified: instead of 'woman', for example, we sometimes find 'personnage': for 'star' we find 'sun' etc. The variations on this extremely simple theme are all the richer, more complex and baffling, because the theme is so elementary. Woman, the stars, and a few animals provide subjects at once commonplace and fantastic, and lend themselves to endless imaginative combinations. The human and animal figures--there is no essential difference between them, so far as that goes--are the most flexible, the simplified forms they will have forever after in Miró's cosmology. Other insistent images now crystallise into signs, as we will meet them often again. Examples are 'the escape ladder', four or six lines ending in knobs, the wavy line derived from the snake, the broken lines that sometimes have 'knobs' on the ends, a simplification of the latter with knobs at each end making a shape we might call 'dumb-bells', and finally a spiraling line which is occasionally developed out of a small disk" (Dupin, op. cit., pp. 372 and 374-375).
Dupin further describes the works from 1946, "Although the handwriting will tend to become freer and invention more flexible, nonetheless his works of 1946 follow the lines established in the paintings of the two preceding years...we find the confirmation and continuing development of an art which becomes progressively less capricious, less anxious, and more self-assured. All the paintings of this year are characterized by the abandonment of the purely rhythmic elements and signs that abounded in 1945. The artist concentrates on his figures and animals, now making them more and more unlike each other, ever odder and more humorous in character. [A] renewed passion for artistic materials produces grounds of great richness and animation, such as we did not find in the large canvases of 1945" (op. cit., p. 382).
The works on paper of 1942-1943 saw the genesis of the subjects that he was to paint in his 1945-1946 canvases. "These works on paper are all variations on a single theme, Woman-Bird-Star. This serves as title for a great many of them, while others are only slightly modified: instead of 'woman', for example, we sometimes find 'personnage': for 'star' we find 'sun' etc. The variations on this extremely simple theme are all the richer, more complex and baffling, because the theme is so elementary. Woman, the stars, and a few animals provide subjects at once commonplace and fantastic, and lend themselves to endless imaginative combinations. The human and animal figures--there is no essential difference between them, so far as that goes--are the most flexible, the simplified forms they will have forever after in Miró's cosmology. Other insistent images now crystallise into signs, as we will meet them often again. Examples are 'the escape ladder', four or six lines ending in knobs, the wavy line derived from the snake, the broken lines that sometimes have 'knobs' on the ends, a simplification of the latter with knobs at each end making a shape we might call 'dumb-bells', and finally a spiraling line which is occasionally developed out of a small disk" (Dupin, op. cit., pp. 372 and 374-375).
Dupin further describes the works from 1946, "Although the handwriting will tend to become freer and invention more flexible, nonetheless his works of 1946 follow the lines established in the paintings of the two preceding years...we find the confirmation and continuing development of an art which becomes progressively less capricious, less anxious, and more self-assured. All the paintings of this year are characterized by the abandonment of the purely rhythmic elements and signs that abounded in 1945. The artist concentrates on his figures and animals, now making them more and more unlike each other, ever odder and more humorous in character. [A] renewed passion for artistic materials produces grounds of great richness and animation, such as we did not find in the large canvases of 1945" (op. cit., p. 382).