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Lot Essay
Executed in 1975, Personnage, oiseau displays the sense of urgency and the buoyant creativity that characterised Joan Miró’s enthusiastic embracement of drawing towards the end of his career. Conjuring the presence of two of Miró’s most recurrent themes – a fantastical ‘character’ and a bird – the drawing combines enveloping, black gestural brushstrokes and vibrant, colourful notes of colour. A few months before executing Personnage, oiseau, Miró had completed a vast painting for the ceiling of the newly built Miró Foundation. Over six meters wide, that composition expressed a very similar artistic idea to that of Personnage, oiseau, uniting explosive, sweeping black brushstrokes to areas of vivid yellow, red, green and blue. Composed only three months later, Personnage, oiseau seems to present a more intimate, diverse rendition of the artistic ambition that had been at the core of Miró’s last mural.
In the years that followed Personnage, oiseau, drawings acquired more and more importance in Miró’s artistic production. Commenting on the period, Miró’s friend and authority Jacques Dupin would describe the atmosphere from which drawings such as Personnage, oiseau emerged as follows: ‘The room was furnished with little more than a board laid across two trestles, a stool, and a sofa. Miró’s tools were pencils, brushes, ink, several tubes of paint and reams of paper placed on the sofa. These were Miró’s last years: drawing, drawing without end, drawing to hold on. Miró’s surfaces became any paper beneath his hand: letters, envelopes, junk mail, wrapping paper, newspaper, cardboard boxes, along with fine paper from Auvergne, Japan, China or Madagascar. Miró’s voracious appetite for paper, and his accompanying drawing frenzy were fed by the paper from his mail and from the kitchen. Hundreds of scattered sheets spelled a final, exceptional moment in Miró’s creative activity’ (J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 2012, p. 354).
In the years that followed Personnage, oiseau, drawings acquired more and more importance in Miró’s artistic production. Commenting on the period, Miró’s friend and authority Jacques Dupin would describe the atmosphere from which drawings such as Personnage, oiseau emerged as follows: ‘The room was furnished with little more than a board laid across two trestles, a stool, and a sofa. Miró’s tools were pencils, brushes, ink, several tubes of paint and reams of paper placed on the sofa. These were Miró’s last years: drawing, drawing without end, drawing to hold on. Miró’s surfaces became any paper beneath his hand: letters, envelopes, junk mail, wrapping paper, newspaper, cardboard boxes, along with fine paper from Auvergne, Japan, China or Madagascar. Miró’s voracious appetite for paper, and his accompanying drawing frenzy were fed by the paper from his mail and from the kitchen. Hundreds of scattered sheets spelled a final, exceptional moment in Miró’s creative activity’ (J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 2012, p. 354).