- 16
Joán Miró
Description
- Joan Miró
- Personnage, oiseau
- signed Miró (lower right)
- oil, gouache and pastel on paper
- 141.6 by 77.3 cm ; 55 3/4 by 30 3/8 in.
Provenance
Acquired from the above in 1979
Exhibited
Literature
Condition
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
In this work, painted on a “recovered” sheet of paper – in a knowing reference to the Surrealist tradition of reused objects and collage – the figure and the bird are fused into a kind of ideogram, a symbol reduced to its primal essence. The same year, Miró would also paint a picture that can be considered a pendant to the present work, and whose theme, complimenting the bird, is the woman (fig. 1).
As Jacques Dupin, the artist’s official biographer, expresses in the catalogue to the exhibition at the Fondation Maeght in 1979 in which this work featured: “Faced with the prevalence of the theme Woman and Bird in Miró’s oeuvre, one wonders: is the woman not a mother-goddess, familiar and all-enveloping, and the bird not the painter himself who looks to her for refuge, but above all for the power to fly and sing with intensity?” (Jacques Dupin, in Miró, Fondation Maeght, 1979, p.26).