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Lot Essay
Jacques Dupin has confirmed the authenticity of this gouache.
In 1947 Miró received a commission to paint a large mural for the newly designed restaurant of the Terrace Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati, which was owned by John J. Emery. Miró flew to the United States, where he stayed from February to October, his first visit to this country. He rented a large studio in New York, and after studying the site in Cincinnati, set to work on the painting (Dupin, no. 817; coll. Cincinnati Art Museum).
During the war years Miró had worked in relative isolation in Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona, cut off from his friends in France, many of whom had fled as exiles to America. Now he suddenly made his reappearance in the art world, and on a more international scale than he had previously known. "The artist's visit to the United States thus marked an important date in his life. It was there that he found confirmation of the importance of his work and evidence of the widespread interest it had aroused. Above all, he discovered that the primitive magic of his art was consonant with the most dynamic of modern societies. According to Clement Greenberg, Miró's success with Americans springs from the fact that he brought them 'the very spirit and atmosphere of the Left Bank, which he has caught more completely for the twenties and thirties than any other painter' " (J. Dupin, Miró, 1993, p. 277).
While in New York he visited his dealer Pierre Matisse, who had helped him win the Emery commission, and the artists Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp and Amadié Ozenfant. He met Jackson Pollock at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17. New York made a powerful impression on Miró. "The intense rhythm of the city, the youth and vitality of the people, the gigantic dimensions of the buildings, the vast distances, and unfamiliar proportions--the difference in scale and measure between American reality and the norms of old Europe--struck Miró like 'a blow on the solar plexus,' to use his own expression " (ibid., p. 276).
Miró painted the present work in America for Richard de Rochemont, who had welcomed the artist into his home. Indeed, the wide-eyed figure that dominates the center of this composition may be the artist himself, a sightseer wandering about this new land on his huge bird feet, flanked by his host and his wife.
In 1947 Miró received a commission to paint a large mural for the newly designed restaurant of the Terrace Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati, which was owned by John J. Emery. Miró flew to the United States, where he stayed from February to October, his first visit to this country. He rented a large studio in New York, and after studying the site in Cincinnati, set to work on the painting (Dupin, no. 817; coll. Cincinnati Art Museum).
During the war years Miró had worked in relative isolation in Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona, cut off from his friends in France, many of whom had fled as exiles to America. Now he suddenly made his reappearance in the art world, and on a more international scale than he had previously known. "The artist's visit to the United States thus marked an important date in his life. It was there that he found confirmation of the importance of his work and evidence of the widespread interest it had aroused. Above all, he discovered that the primitive magic of his art was consonant with the most dynamic of modern societies. According to Clement Greenberg, Miró's success with Americans springs from the fact that he brought them 'the very spirit and atmosphere of the Left Bank, which he has caught more completely for the twenties and thirties than any other painter' " (J. Dupin, Miró, 1993, p. 277).
While in New York he visited his dealer Pierre Matisse, who had helped him win the Emery commission, and the artists Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp and Amadié Ozenfant. He met Jackson Pollock at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17. New York made a powerful impression on Miró. "The intense rhythm of the city, the youth and vitality of the people, the gigantic dimensions of the buildings, the vast distances, and unfamiliar proportions--the difference in scale and measure between American reality and the norms of old Europe--struck Miró like 'a blow on the solar plexus,' to use his own expression " (ibid., p. 276).
Miró painted the present work in America for Richard de Rochemont, who had welcomed the artist into his home. Indeed, the wide-eyed figure that dominates the center of this composition may be the artist himself, a sightseer wandering about this new land on his huge bird feet, flanked by his host and his wife.