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拍品專文
Jacques Dupin has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In his groundbreaking publication on the artist, Joan Miró, Life and Work, Jacques Dupin describes the early 1930s as years of great importance in the development of Miró's work: '... it was just at this time that his art underwent changes as sudden and far reaching as to deserve the term 'cataclysmic'. The serene works of the years devoted to concentration on plastic concerns and to spiritual control of figures and signs now gave way to a new outburst of subjectivism, to an expressionistic unleashing of instinctual forces. The volcano which for some years now had been quiescent suddenly erupted. The clear skies suddenly clouded over, and a violent storm proceeded to darken the peaceful artistic climate - indeed, to shake Miró's art to its foundation' (J. Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, London 1962, p. 262). Undeniably, Miró from the early 1930s onward went through a period of continuous experimentation in various different techniques and materials. Paintings on cardboard, gouaches on a watercolour background, drawings in India ink on white paper and watercolour, and paintings on uralita wood, and sandpaper. He also began a series of egg tempera paintings on masonite and another of oil paint on copper, which he finished in 1936.
The present work falls into this period of Miró's fervent experimentations and creativity. With its intense, brilliant primary colours and the biomorphic figures floating through these colour planes, Signes et figurations is a fine example of Miró's rendering of his earlier Surrealist dream paintings. As Roland Penrose observed on the works of 1935: 'The biomorphic shapes in pure colour, which had moved in rhythmic dance in the compositions of 1933, now became solidified into fierce embodiments of female monsters seen in brilliant colour' (R. Penrose, Miró, London, 1970, pp. 49-51).
In a letter to Pierre Matisse dated October 6, 1935, Miró calls this stage in his career an 'auto-revision of my work'. The subject used by the artist is very familiar to him as he is looking at his surroundings in Montroig: the peasant, his wife, the rooster and the beautiful landscape. The difference with the similar theme painted in the mid-20s is that now the farm had gone mad, everything was wild and in hysteria, and the artist was unable to keep these monsters away. Created in the shadow of the approaching storm of the Spanish Civil War, these fantastical creatures of his vision are here and will stay for the years to come. After the 1930s, these monsters will continue to appear from time to time in the artist's oeuvre, but becoming in later years familiar and amusing, as if friendly companions.
In his groundbreaking publication on the artist, Joan Miró, Life and Work, Jacques Dupin describes the early 1930s as years of great importance in the development of Miró's work: '... it was just at this time that his art underwent changes as sudden and far reaching as to deserve the term 'cataclysmic'. The serene works of the years devoted to concentration on plastic concerns and to spiritual control of figures and signs now gave way to a new outburst of subjectivism, to an expressionistic unleashing of instinctual forces. The volcano which for some years now had been quiescent suddenly erupted. The clear skies suddenly clouded over, and a violent storm proceeded to darken the peaceful artistic climate - indeed, to shake Miró's art to its foundation' (J. Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, London 1962, p. 262). Undeniably, Miró from the early 1930s onward went through a period of continuous experimentation in various different techniques and materials. Paintings on cardboard, gouaches on a watercolour background, drawings in India ink on white paper and watercolour, and paintings on uralita wood, and sandpaper. He also began a series of egg tempera paintings on masonite and another of oil paint on copper, which he finished in 1936.
The present work falls into this period of Miró's fervent experimentations and creativity. With its intense, brilliant primary colours and the biomorphic figures floating through these colour planes, Signes et figurations is a fine example of Miró's rendering of his earlier Surrealist dream paintings. As Roland Penrose observed on the works of 1935: 'The biomorphic shapes in pure colour, which had moved in rhythmic dance in the compositions of 1933, now became solidified into fierce embodiments of female monsters seen in brilliant colour' (R. Penrose, Miró, London, 1970, pp. 49-51).
In a letter to Pierre Matisse dated October 6, 1935, Miró calls this stage in his career an 'auto-revision of my work'. The subject used by the artist is very familiar to him as he is looking at his surroundings in Montroig: the peasant, his wife, the rooster and the beautiful landscape. The difference with the similar theme painted in the mid-20s is that now the farm had gone mad, everything was wild and in hysteria, and the artist was unable to keep these monsters away. Created in the shadow of the approaching storm of the Spanish Civil War, these fantastical creatures of his vision are here and will stay for the years to come. After the 1930s, these monsters will continue to appear from time to time in the artist's oeuvre, but becoming in later years familiar and amusing, as if friendly companions.