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Lot Essay
Peinture is one of a series of deeply poetic, whimsical and carefully executed works that Joan Miró painted in 1949. Described by Miró’s friend and biographer, Jaques Dupin as ‘one of the most important “series” in this artist’s work,’ this group is defined by the elaborate, delicate compositions that Miró created amid richly worked, highly textured grounds (Joan Miró: Life and Work, New York, 1993, p. 394). Filled with the artist’s signature array of floating, astral signs and earthbound forms whose bold colours radiate from the canvas, this composition is jewel-like in both its imagery and delicately refined handling. Acquired from the Galerie Maeght in 1962, it has remained in the same private collection for over sixty years.
During the late 1940s, Miró embarked on a period of travel. In February 1947, he voyaged to New York, where he would remain for eight months, until the autumn of this year, before embarking on a trip to Paris in the spring of 1948. After the solitude of the war years, these visits were revelatory to Miró, providing him with an array of new inspiration and ideas. His time in New York made a particularly strong impression on him. In contrast to war torn Europe, the energy and vitality of the city, the scale of the buildings and spirit of optimism all struck him like ‘a blow to the solar plexus’ (quoted in ibid., p. 386). He met old friends and made new acquaintances, and saw first hand how his art was being received by new audiences. Following his return home, Miró entered a highly productive period in his work, reinvigorated and energized by his travels abroad.
In 1949, Miró began two concurrent series of works – the so called ‘Slow Paintings,’ to which the present Peinture belongs, and a second, more freely improvised and executed group, known as the ‘Spontaneous Paintings’. As Dupin has described, ‘The former are first and foremost “creations,” the latter “communications.” They correspond in the painter’s temperament to moments of reflection and moments of impulse, which follow one another in a natural succession like inhaling and exhaling. Heretofore they have most often appeared in the one and the same canvas; never before were they so clearly separated as in these works of 1949 and 1950’ (ibid., p. 393). The ‘Slow Paintings’, with their refined detail and precise execution, recall Miró’s early masterpieces such as La Ferme (1921-1922, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C), while the floating accumulation of otherworldly, poetic, jewel-like forms that the artist created with this painterly approach are reminiscent of his great wartime series on paper, the Constellations.
What sets these ‘Slow Paintings’ apart from Miró’s previous work is their grounds. ‘Miró has rarely displayed such sensuous skill,’ in the handling of the work’s surface, Dupin explained. ‘He did this in a spirit of complete freedom. The hand does not impose effects, does not choose colours in advance; it serves as a magnetizer to bring out what the material and the grain of the canvas suggest or desire, their secret song’ (ibid., p. 393). In the present work, Miró has revelled in the innate texture of the canvas, adding washes of colour that seem to emerge and dissolve simultaneously from the surface. In this important series, Dupin continued to describe, ‘By various scraping, scumbling, and sandpapering operations the colours are joined to the canvas, so that it is penetrated in depth. Thus colour seems to well up from the canvas, at the same time bringing out the latter’s texture and weave; one would swear this union had been the work of weathering, rather than of human hands. It is the memory of the walls of a prehistoric cave that is restored to us in all its freshness, and the coloured signs and forms inscribed on it are redolent of the very substance of time’ (ibid., p. 393).
Upon this richly material ground Miró’s transcendent visual world of forms, signs and shapes unfolds. A dazzling blue star presides over the composition, luminous against the seemingly golden hued canvas. Below, the abstracted form of a figure appears to stand, an all-seeing eye dominating its floating visage. These elements had by this time become central to the artist’s deeply personal and instantly recognizable pictorial vocabulary. With a ceaseless spirit of invention, Miró let these organic forms unfurl upon the canvas, allowing the viewer to enter the dream-like world he created, one in which purity, lyricism and freedom abound. ‘Figures, birds, animals, stars and signs play and combine with one another with an elegance and acrobatic sureness, a casualness in the revelation of mystery and joy in their nostalgic evocation of a primitive world which together confound the imagination’ (ibid., p. 394).
During the late 1940s, Miró embarked on a period of travel. In February 1947, he voyaged to New York, where he would remain for eight months, until the autumn of this year, before embarking on a trip to Paris in the spring of 1948. After the solitude of the war years, these visits were revelatory to Miró, providing him with an array of new inspiration and ideas. His time in New York made a particularly strong impression on him. In contrast to war torn Europe, the energy and vitality of the city, the scale of the buildings and spirit of optimism all struck him like ‘a blow to the solar plexus’ (quoted in ibid., p. 386). He met old friends and made new acquaintances, and saw first hand how his art was being received by new audiences. Following his return home, Miró entered a highly productive period in his work, reinvigorated and energized by his travels abroad.
In 1949, Miró began two concurrent series of works – the so called ‘Slow Paintings,’ to which the present Peinture belongs, and a second, more freely improvised and executed group, known as the ‘Spontaneous Paintings’. As Dupin has described, ‘The former are first and foremost “creations,” the latter “communications.” They correspond in the painter’s temperament to moments of reflection and moments of impulse, which follow one another in a natural succession like inhaling and exhaling. Heretofore they have most often appeared in the one and the same canvas; never before were they so clearly separated as in these works of 1949 and 1950’ (ibid., p. 393). The ‘Slow Paintings’, with their refined detail and precise execution, recall Miró’s early masterpieces such as La Ferme (1921-1922, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C), while the floating accumulation of otherworldly, poetic, jewel-like forms that the artist created with this painterly approach are reminiscent of his great wartime series on paper, the Constellations.
What sets these ‘Slow Paintings’ apart from Miró’s previous work is their grounds. ‘Miró has rarely displayed such sensuous skill,’ in the handling of the work’s surface, Dupin explained. ‘He did this in a spirit of complete freedom. The hand does not impose effects, does not choose colours in advance; it serves as a magnetizer to bring out what the material and the grain of the canvas suggest or desire, their secret song’ (ibid., p. 393). In the present work, Miró has revelled in the innate texture of the canvas, adding washes of colour that seem to emerge and dissolve simultaneously from the surface. In this important series, Dupin continued to describe, ‘By various scraping, scumbling, and sandpapering operations the colours are joined to the canvas, so that it is penetrated in depth. Thus colour seems to well up from the canvas, at the same time bringing out the latter’s texture and weave; one would swear this union had been the work of weathering, rather than of human hands. It is the memory of the walls of a prehistoric cave that is restored to us in all its freshness, and the coloured signs and forms inscribed on it are redolent of the very substance of time’ (ibid., p. 393).
Upon this richly material ground Miró’s transcendent visual world of forms, signs and shapes unfolds. A dazzling blue star presides over the composition, luminous against the seemingly golden hued canvas. Below, the abstracted form of a figure appears to stand, an all-seeing eye dominating its floating visage. These elements had by this time become central to the artist’s deeply personal and instantly recognizable pictorial vocabulary. With a ceaseless spirit of invention, Miró let these organic forms unfurl upon the canvas, allowing the viewer to enter the dream-like world he created, one in which purity, lyricism and freedom abound. ‘Figures, birds, animals, stars and signs play and combine with one another with an elegance and acrobatic sureness, a casualness in the revelation of mystery and joy in their nostalgic evocation of a primitive world which together confound the imagination’ (ibid., p. 394).