Tête personnage

Joan Miró’s ceramics were born from his close relationship with Josep Llorens Artigas, a highly skilled artist whose work in the medium focused on creating unique pieces that expressed the personality of their creator. The two men had forged an enduring friendship during their early years in Barcelona, having met at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc in 1912, before completing their studies together at the art school run by Francesc Galí. Though both moved to Paris in the 1920s, where their paths often crossed and overlapped, Miró and Artigas’s long, and highly productive collaboration in ceramics only began towards the end of the Second World War, when the two artists found themselves once again in Spain at the same time. Over the course of the following three decades, Miró and Artigas would often collaborate on the creation of ceramic pieces, combining their respective skills and styles to create a myriad of intriguing forms, from novel sculptural works to dynamically painted and glazed vases and vessels. Created in 1968, Tête personnage is a unique earthenware sculpture, shaped and moulded by Miró’s hands into a playful, biomorphic character, whose surface he then scored with flowing, linear elements and brightly coloured pigment to indicate features. Acquired by the present owner over fifty years ago, Tête personnage captures the spirit of invention and intuition that characterises Miró’s most successful experiments in the medium.