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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Jacques Dupin, dated Paris, 7 mars 96.
The calligraphic character and relative economy of expression of the present work perhaps owe something to Miró's first visit to Japan in 1966. In works from the late-1960s such as the Rimbaud-inspired La chanson des voyelles (D 1242; Museum of Modern Art, New York), one of Miró's so-called 'long' paintings, the influence of Japanese calligraphy and format come into play. Also symptomatic of a Japanese inflection in Miró's art in this period is a relative austerity of form and line, rendered even more stark and bold in the present work when set against a black bacground. Miró claimed to feel in deep harmony with the Japanese soul, amplifying this connection by saying, 'I believe in obscure forces. I believe in astrology. I am a Taurus with Scorpio in the ascendant. Perhaps that is why there are spheres and circles in many of my paintings - to evoke the governing planets' (quoted in M. Rowell (ed.), Joan Miró, Selected Writings and Interviews, London, 1986, p. 275).
In common with his Surrealist colleague Max Ernst - and many other artists, visual, literary or musical, for that matter - Miró felt extreme unease in front of the blank sheet or canvas. He confessed to his own lack of method in overcoming the difficulties of the first step, commenting in 1968, the sixtieth year of his painting career: 'I might look calm but underneath I am tormented. Surrealism opened up a universe that justified and soothed my torment. Fauvism and Cubism only taught me severe and formal disciplines. There was a silent revolt inside me. Surrealism allowed me to go beyond formal research; it took me to the heart of poetry, to the heart of joy: the joy of discovering what I am doing after I have done it, of feeling the meaning and the title of a painting grow inside me as I work on it' (quoted in ibid.).
The palette of the present work, reduced to the essentials of red, yellow, green and blue, augmented by black and white, reflects the reductive colour vocabulary Miró had operated since the 1940s. Red, very often seen in the circular form as in the present work, represents fire, power or the sun, while green has the mellower role of life-giver, an element closer to the natural cycle of birth and regeneration. Yellow, aside from its natural role as a complement to blue, signifies joy, while blue offers a window into the spiritual.
The calligraphic character and relative economy of expression of the present work perhaps owe something to Miró's first visit to Japan in 1966. In works from the late-1960s such as the Rimbaud-inspired La chanson des voyelles (D 1242; Museum of Modern Art, New York), one of Miró's so-called 'long' paintings, the influence of Japanese calligraphy and format come into play. Also symptomatic of a Japanese inflection in Miró's art in this period is a relative austerity of form and line, rendered even more stark and bold in the present work when set against a black bacground. Miró claimed to feel in deep harmony with the Japanese soul, amplifying this connection by saying, 'I believe in obscure forces. I believe in astrology. I am a Taurus with Scorpio in the ascendant. Perhaps that is why there are spheres and circles in many of my paintings - to evoke the governing planets' (quoted in M. Rowell (ed.), Joan Miró, Selected Writings and Interviews, London, 1986, p. 275).
In common with his Surrealist colleague Max Ernst - and many other artists, visual, literary or musical, for that matter - Miró felt extreme unease in front of the blank sheet or canvas. He confessed to his own lack of method in overcoming the difficulties of the first step, commenting in 1968, the sixtieth year of his painting career: 'I might look calm but underneath I am tormented. Surrealism opened up a universe that justified and soothed my torment. Fauvism and Cubism only taught me severe and formal disciplines. There was a silent revolt inside me. Surrealism allowed me to go beyond formal research; it took me to the heart of poetry, to the heart of joy: the joy of discovering what I am doing after I have done it, of feeling the meaning and the title of a painting grow inside me as I work on it' (quoted in ibid.).
The palette of the present work, reduced to the essentials of red, yellow, green and blue, augmented by black and white, reflects the reductive colour vocabulary Miró had operated since the 1940s. Red, very often seen in the circular form as in the present work, represents fire, power or the sun, while green has the mellower role of life-giver, an element closer to the natural cycle of birth and regeneration. Yellow, aside from its natural role as a complement to blue, signifies joy, while blue offers a window into the spiritual.