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Lot Essay
Jacques Dupin has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Femme, oiseau, étoiles ('Woman, Bird, Stars') was executed in 1943 during a brief hiatus in Miró's career, a moment of calm in the midst of conflict. Miró had returned to his home in Barcelona where, in contrast to the raging war in the rest of Europe, there was a relative sense of calm. This calm had a profound effect on his works from this period, especially when compared to his previous output, the series of Constellations, which were densely packed personal mythologies that intermingled a childlike innocence with the artist's fraught tensions. In contrast to the frenetic surfaces of these works, in Femme, oiseau, étoiles Miró has reclaimed the space of the surface. There is, in the absence of the cluttered constellations of elements, a sense of tranquillity, although this belies a sense of menace created by the strange head and omnipresent, all-seeing eyes in the work. The main figure retains the childlike appearance of the characters from Miró's highly structured personal mythology. However, here the childlike innocence he garnered and lamented in the Constellations is replaced by a sense of clumsy brutality emphasised by the sheer bulk of the head.
In Femme, oiseau, étoiles, the actual process of creation has changed - where the Constellations were controlled and meticulous exorcisms of Miró's wartime woes, here the artist has returned to his interest in a more spontaneous means of execution. Miró himself explained of this time in his career: 'Now I worked with the least possible control. At any rate in the first place, the drawing' (Miró, quoted in R. Penrose, Miró, London, 1995, p. 108). This was a stark contrast to his earlier works, as the process of exorcism took a new form. Miró added a physicality to the process of drawing that brought a freshness and expressive power to his works of this period. He breathed new life into his own personalised iconography, which had become increasingly rigid and controlled in his previous works. Here the same whimsical, arcane symbols - birds, stars and childlike depictions of people, poetic ephemera from his own memories and imagination - are revitalised, an effect heightened by the main figure's domination of most of the surface. The reduction of the number of elements and their new scale in the composition makes the image more personal, as Miró introduces the viewer to a figment of his memory on a highly intimate scale. The texture of the Constellations has been eschewed in Femme, oiseau, étoiles in favour of a simple, striking icon.
Femme, oiseau, étoiles ('Woman, Bird, Stars') was executed in 1943 during a brief hiatus in Miró's career, a moment of calm in the midst of conflict. Miró had returned to his home in Barcelona where, in contrast to the raging war in the rest of Europe, there was a relative sense of calm. This calm had a profound effect on his works from this period, especially when compared to his previous output, the series of Constellations, which were densely packed personal mythologies that intermingled a childlike innocence with the artist's fraught tensions. In contrast to the frenetic surfaces of these works, in Femme, oiseau, étoiles Miró has reclaimed the space of the surface. There is, in the absence of the cluttered constellations of elements, a sense of tranquillity, although this belies a sense of menace created by the strange head and omnipresent, all-seeing eyes in the work. The main figure retains the childlike appearance of the characters from Miró's highly structured personal mythology. However, here the childlike innocence he garnered and lamented in the Constellations is replaced by a sense of clumsy brutality emphasised by the sheer bulk of the head.
In Femme, oiseau, étoiles, the actual process of creation has changed - where the Constellations were controlled and meticulous exorcisms of Miró's wartime woes, here the artist has returned to his interest in a more spontaneous means of execution. Miró himself explained of this time in his career: 'Now I worked with the least possible control. At any rate in the first place, the drawing' (Miró, quoted in R. Penrose, Miró, London, 1995, p. 108). This was a stark contrast to his earlier works, as the process of exorcism took a new form. Miró added a physicality to the process of drawing that brought a freshness and expressive power to his works of this period. He breathed new life into his own personalised iconography, which had become increasingly rigid and controlled in his previous works. Here the same whimsical, arcane symbols - birds, stars and childlike depictions of people, poetic ephemera from his own memories and imagination - are revitalised, an effect heightened by the main figure's domination of most of the surface. The reduction of the number of elements and their new scale in the composition makes the image more personal, as Miró introduces the viewer to a figment of his memory on a highly intimate scale. The texture of the Constellations has been eschewed in Femme, oiseau, étoiles in favour of a simple, striking icon.