"In 1942 and 1943, Miró produced a great many works, all on paper. 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 the explorations is to determine the relationship bewteen drawing and the materials, the relationship between line and space...Miró's explorations with respect to materials, however are a research into the unknown, he tried to liberate the materials, to make them speak...All the works he created during this period were "characterised by freedom of invention and a marvellous effortlessness...now the creatures, the stars and the signs of inner universe were crystallized. He took stock of his forms, meditated on ways to reanimate them, restore their mobility, preserve their imperfections...Women, stars and a few animals provide subjects at once commonplace and fantastic and lend themselves to endless imaginative combinations. Their enormous capacity for life is subject to no law save that of the internal logic of their birth and development - the hundreth woman is as new as the first of the fiftieth which accounts for this renewal of his means of expression, his ability to treat the artistic materials as for ever fresh and untouched." (J. Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, London, 1962, pp. 371-374)