Femme, étoile

The year 1942 marks an important moment in Joan Miró's career with the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosting his first major museum retrospective exhibition. Miró had been living in Palma since leaving France in 1940, shortly before the Germans arrived. From Palma he wrote to Ricard: 'I considered it convenient for me to spend some time here in Palma... I am planning to spend the summer in Montroig and I would be very happy to see you, to talk a little, and to bring back the old times of the studio at Baix de Sant Pere street... I spend all my time here working... I see almost no one, and in this way I can escape without being engulfed by the terrible tragedy of the entire world.' (quoted in C. Lanchner, Joan Miró, New York, 1993, p. 337). His return to Spain enabled Miró to rediscover with fresh enthusiasm the lanscape and scenery of the country he had left for four years in exile in France. In 1942, Miró returned to his home and big studio in Barcelona. As the political situation had calmed down a little, Miró's paintings changed. Driven by a desire to purge his style of the minute detail that had preoccupied him up to then and particularly in the Constellations, he turned to new methods of expression. Big colour planes and few shapes and form dominate his compositions. After a period of love for detail Miró felt the urge to liberate himself from that: 'Now I worked with the least possible control, at any rate in the first place, the drawing.' (to John Sweeny, quoted in R. Penrose, Miró, London, 1970, p. 108).