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Lot Essay
Jacques Dupin has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Miró and his family took to the roads as refugees during the German invasion of France in June 1940, and made their way to Palma, Majorca the following month. The artist remained there with his wife's family as he tried to gauge how the fascist dictator Franco's police would respond to his return--the artist was well known for his sympathy for the defeated loyalist faction in the Spanish Civil War. While in Palma, Miró resumed his series of Constellations, which he began in Normandy in January 1940 before the Battle of France. He completed the final three works in the series, which came to number 23 in all, in July-September 1941, when he was finally able to return to Catalonia and visit his ancestral home in Montroig. The famous sequence of Constellations, done in gouache and thinned oil on paper, was a virtuosic achievement of concentrated visual composition, as well as a watershed moment in the development and presentation of the artist's imagery.
Miró executed the present work in February 1942, during a second stay in Palma, less than six months after the completion of the final Constellation. It reflected the artist's continuing interest in working with drawing and painting media on paper. In fact, Miró did not make any oil paintings on canvas between 1940 and 1944. This was the result of the supreme effort that had gone into the making of the Constellations, the stresses and hardships of the wartime period, as well as the transitory nature of his existence, during a period when the artist alternated between staying in Palma, Barcelona and Montroig. Jacques Dupin wrote:
In 1942 [the Constellations] were followed by a large number of watercolors, gouaches, pastels, and drawings, characterized by freedom of invention a marvelous effortlessness. Scrupulous asceticism gives way to humor and childlike whimsicality. In this evolution of his art, which was to end in the creation of his definitive style, renewed contact with Spain after five years of absence--with Majorca most especially--was doubtless crucial.
They are explorations undertaken with no preconceived idea - effervescent creations in which the artist perfected a vast repertory of forms, signs, and formulas, bringing into play all the materials and instruments compatible with paper. The object of all these explorations is to determine the relationship between drawing and the materials, the relationship between line and space. The artist's sole concern was life for the living pulse and movement of life. (in Miro, exh. cat., Barcelona, 1992, pp. 257-260).
Miró and his family took to the roads as refugees during the German invasion of France in June 1940, and made their way to Palma, Majorca the following month. The artist remained there with his wife's family as he tried to gauge how the fascist dictator Franco's police would respond to his return--the artist was well known for his sympathy for the defeated loyalist faction in the Spanish Civil War. While in Palma, Miró resumed his series of Constellations, which he began in Normandy in January 1940 before the Battle of France. He completed the final three works in the series, which came to number 23 in all, in July-September 1941, when he was finally able to return to Catalonia and visit his ancestral home in Montroig. The famous sequence of Constellations, done in gouache and thinned oil on paper, was a virtuosic achievement of concentrated visual composition, as well as a watershed moment in the development and presentation of the artist's imagery.
Miró executed the present work in February 1942, during a second stay in Palma, less than six months after the completion of the final Constellation. It reflected the artist's continuing interest in working with drawing and painting media on paper. In fact, Miró did not make any oil paintings on canvas between 1940 and 1944. This was the result of the supreme effort that had gone into the making of the Constellations, the stresses and hardships of the wartime period, as well as the transitory nature of his existence, during a period when the artist alternated between staying in Palma, Barcelona and Montroig. Jacques Dupin wrote:
In 1942 [the Constellations] were followed by a large number of watercolors, gouaches, pastels, and drawings, characterized by freedom of invention a marvelous effortlessness. Scrupulous asceticism gives way to humor and childlike whimsicality. In this evolution of his art, which was to end in the creation of his definitive style, renewed contact with Spain after five years of absence--with Majorca most especially--was doubtless crucial.
They are explorations undertaken with no preconceived idea - effervescent creations in which the artist perfected a vast repertory of forms, signs, and formulas, bringing into play all the materials and instruments compatible with paper. The object of all these explorations is to determine the relationship between drawing and the materials, the relationship between line and space. The artist's sole concern was life for the living pulse and movement of life. (in Miro, exh. cat., Barcelona, 1992, pp. 257-260).