Joan Miró

Galerie Berggruen, Paris
Galerie d'Art Moderne, Basel
Private Collection, Milan (acquired in 1959)
Thence by descent

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné. Drawings, 1938-1959, vol. II, Paris, 2010, no. 896, illustrated p. 60

Executed on cream wove paper. Sheet is slightly time darkened overall. Artist's pinholes at all corners and a few small scattered stains, mostly around extreme edges. Some remnants of tape on verso, otherwise fine. Work is in very good condition.
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The onset of the Spanish Civil War exiled Miró to France between 1936 and 1940.  The years spent in Paris, witnessing from afar the victory of General Franco, were the catalyst for the production of works from the so-called "savage period." The Nazi invasion of Western Europe in 1939 forced Miró to return to his native Spain, where he spent the war years producing some of his most compelling works. His arrival in Spain heralded a four-year odyssey in which the artist experimented with watercolor, gouache, pastel and oil-wash on paper.

In 1942, having finished his important Constellation series, Miró continued exploring fantastical themes.  He continued to develop the Woman-Bird-Star series which was drawn from the multiplicity of signs and themes present in the Constellations. The period spent in Spain between 1940 and 1945 was crucial for the forging of Miró's definitive style.  Most of the "signs" or elements he devised continued to populate his paintings and drawings of later years. In the mid-1920s Miró experimented with poetic titles, sometimes transcribing them directly to the canvas. By the early 1930s he decided that poetic titles or almost any titles except those of the most non-descriptive kind (e.g. Figure, Personnage, etc.) lent themselves to interpretations he wished to avoid.  In was not until the late 1930s when Miró returned to providing his works with eloquent titles, most of which came to him during the act of painting.