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Lot Essay
Pique-nique is one a series of large drawings on the theme of lovers that Miró drew in May 1928, probably following his trip on 7-15 May to Belgium and The Netherlands. During this brief holiday he visited various museums in Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam. In a 1957 interview with the Catalonian critic Lluis Permanyer, Miró recalled, "I was tremendously interested in Vermeer and the seventeeth century Dutch masters. I bought a lot of postcards featuring reproductions of their most typical and famous paintings. When I got back to Paris, I decided to copy some of them in my own style. I had the postcard pinned up on my easel while I painted" (quoted in M. Rowell, ed., Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1986, p. 292). Miró was especially drawn to the genre paintings of lesser masters such as Jan Steen and Hendrick Martensz Sorgh, which featured lovers flirting with one another. These he translated into his important series of three Intérieurs hollandaises (Dupin, nos. 304-307), plus two related paintings, Nature morte and Pomme de terre (Dupin, nos. 307 and 308, respectively).
Miró began to make sketches for these paintings soon after his return, and around the same time executed this related series of 'Lovers' drawings. He commenced the first Dutch interior by 9 July while he was staying on his family's estate in Montroig, near Barcelona. On 2 September Pierre Loeb, his Paris dealer, having seen the first interior, wrote to the artist, "It contains almost all your researches up to the present moment, and summarizes them while at the same time suggesting a departure in a new direction, after shedding all the influences which up until your last paintings, remained a bit too visible and literary. I think you are going to make a more important statement" (quoted in C. Lanchner, Joan Miró, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1994, p. 327).
The 'Lovers' drawings occupy a similarly pivotal position, coming between the more abstract graphic style of the mid- and late 1920s, and the familiar figure-based drawings of the 1930s and thereafter. In the present drawing, a man and woman hold hands across a picnic blanket, on which the various items of their repast have been depicted as nearly abstract signs. A simple horizon line denotes the landscape setting, a device that Miró had frequently employed in his paintings during the mid-1920s. The setting may refer to a seaside outing during the artist's recent holiday in the Low Countries. Sidra Stich has described the evolution of Miró's figures, which consist mainly of exaggerated body parts, as paralleling prehistoric man's early attempts at figuration. "Line drawings of elusive figures progressively become shapes structured like anatomical forms. Yet, as in early cave figures, the creatures are never clarified as humans. They persist in a pre-anthropomorphic state. Miró's concern with origins manifests itself on several levels: man emerging from an amorphous, animalistic mass, a figure emerging from a spontaneous line, and imagery suggesting a new beginning of life" (in Joan Miro: The Development of a Sign Language, exh. cat., Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, 1980, p. 20).
Pique-nique may contain autobiographical elements as well. Since March 1927, Miró had been engaged to a young woman named Maria Pilar, and the 'Lovers' drawings appear to suggest the artist's anticipation at their imminent union. Their engagement was broken off, however, sometime in June 1928. Nevertheless, within a year, Miró met and married Pilar Juncosa, who remained his wife for the rest of his life.
James Johnson Sweeny, the renowned scholar and curator of modern art, included this drawing in his monograph on Miró (op. cit.), the first ever written about the artist, for the occasion of Miró's first museum exhibition in America, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. Sweeney wrote, "Miró's exercises in drawing from his imagination without a model had undoubtedly encouraged a more assertive gesture-rhythm than he had been able to achieve earlier. This new found graphic freedom and assurance shows itself in the same year [1928] in a series of large drawings on felt paper (page 49 [the present drawing]), which announce the powerful calligraphy of his mature style" (op. cit., p. 47).
Miró began to make sketches for these paintings soon after his return, and around the same time executed this related series of 'Lovers' drawings. He commenced the first Dutch interior by 9 July while he was staying on his family's estate in Montroig, near Barcelona. On 2 September Pierre Loeb, his Paris dealer, having seen the first interior, wrote to the artist, "It contains almost all your researches up to the present moment, and summarizes them while at the same time suggesting a departure in a new direction, after shedding all the influences which up until your last paintings, remained a bit too visible and literary. I think you are going to make a more important statement" (quoted in C. Lanchner, Joan Miró, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1994, p. 327).
The 'Lovers' drawings occupy a similarly pivotal position, coming between the more abstract graphic style of the mid- and late 1920s, and the familiar figure-based drawings of the 1930s and thereafter. In the present drawing, a man and woman hold hands across a picnic blanket, on which the various items of their repast have been depicted as nearly abstract signs. A simple horizon line denotes the landscape setting, a device that Miró had frequently employed in his paintings during the mid-1920s. The setting may refer to a seaside outing during the artist's recent holiday in the Low Countries. Sidra Stich has described the evolution of Miró's figures, which consist mainly of exaggerated body parts, as paralleling prehistoric man's early attempts at figuration. "Line drawings of elusive figures progressively become shapes structured like anatomical forms. Yet, as in early cave figures, the creatures are never clarified as humans. They persist in a pre-anthropomorphic state. Miró's concern with origins manifests itself on several levels: man emerging from an amorphous, animalistic mass, a figure emerging from a spontaneous line, and imagery suggesting a new beginning of life" (in Joan Miro: The Development of a Sign Language, exh. cat., Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, 1980, p. 20).
Pique-nique may contain autobiographical elements as well. Since March 1927, Miró had been engaged to a young woman named Maria Pilar, and the 'Lovers' drawings appear to suggest the artist's anticipation at their imminent union. Their engagement was broken off, however, sometime in June 1928. Nevertheless, within a year, Miró met and married Pilar Juncosa, who remained his wife for the rest of his life.
James Johnson Sweeny, the renowned scholar and curator of modern art, included this drawing in his monograph on Miró (op. cit.), the first ever written about the artist, for the occasion of Miró's first museum exhibition in America, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. Sweeney wrote, "Miró's exercises in drawing from his imagination without a model had undoubtedly encouraged a more assertive gesture-rhythm than he had been able to achieve earlier. This new found graphic freedom and assurance shows itself in the same year [1928] in a series of large drawings on felt paper (page 49 [the present drawing]), which announce the powerful calligraphy of his mature style" (op. cit., p. 47).