.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Sold with a photo-certificate from Jacques Dupin dated Paris 14 Juillet 99.
The present gouache, which was dedicated to Jacqueline Selz, the General Secretary of the Salon de Mai of 1964, was created at the same time as the large oil painting of the same title. Both were executed on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Salon de Mai.
Yvan Tallandier recalls discussing the gouache with Miró at the Salon: "I thought the gouache was a very detailed preliminary sketch, but Miró enlightened me; it was not a sketch but a sort of substitute image. When the painting had not yet been completed, he needed a photographic record of it in its unfinished state. The gouache was done for this purpose and substituted for the large painting. The sketch was, in consequence, both anterior and posterior to the picture." (Op. cit., San Lazzaro, p. 87).
The title, Message to a Friend, can be traced back to a letter from one of Miró's great artistic predecessors, whom he acknowledged as one of his masters, Alexander Calder. In fact, the composition relates closely to the envelope of a letter sent by Calder to Miró in 1958, where a large, sweeping arrow points from the lower left to the upper right hand corner. Tallandier goes on to explain: "In other words, Message to a Friend would be the meditation on the messenger and, in a more general way, on the communication. It would also be an episode, the last episode in the postal adventures of a letter, which, after leaving Roxbury in Connecticut, had arrived at its destination. First it was an arrow pointing upwards like a rocket at the moment of launching, the point was blunted, the rocket grew softer and, at one moment, it seemed to explode, but it regained its shape and it had obviously turned around. It is now pointing downwards. It approaches the ground (the penultimate state). It touches it - this is the painting." (Op. cit., p. 88).
The present gouache, which was dedicated to Jacqueline Selz, the General Secretary of the Salon de Mai of 1964, was created at the same time as the large oil painting of the same title. Both were executed on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Salon de Mai.
Yvan Tallandier recalls discussing the gouache with Miró at the Salon: "I thought the gouache was a very detailed preliminary sketch, but Miró enlightened me; it was not a sketch but a sort of substitute image. When the painting had not yet been completed, he needed a photographic record of it in its unfinished state. The gouache was done for this purpose and substituted for the large painting. The sketch was, in consequence, both anterior and posterior to the picture." (Op. cit., San Lazzaro, p. 87).
The title, Message to a Friend, can be traced back to a letter from one of Miró's great artistic predecessors, whom he acknowledged as one of his masters, Alexander Calder. In fact, the composition relates closely to the envelope of a letter sent by Calder to Miró in 1958, where a large, sweeping arrow points from the lower left to the upper right hand corner. Tallandier goes on to explain: "In other words, Message to a Friend would be the meditation on the messenger and, in a more general way, on the communication. It would also be an episode, the last episode in the postal adventures of a letter, which, after leaving Roxbury in Connecticut, had arrived at its destination. First it was an arrow pointing upwards like a rocket at the moment of launching, the point was blunted, the rocket grew softer and, at one moment, it seemed to explode, but it regained its shape and it had obviously turned around. It is now pointing downwards. It approaches the ground (the penultimate state). It touches it - this is the painting." (Op. cit., p. 88).