Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Artcurial, Paris
Galerie Thessa Herold, Paris
Private Collection, Madrid

Paris, Artcurial, Les Noces Catalanes: Barcelone-Paris, 1870-1970, 1985, no. 106, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné. Paintings 1969-1975, vol. V, Paris, 2013, no. 1345, illustrated p. 23

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is not lined. The surface is slightly dirty around the edges. Under UV light some restorations to the extreme perimeter, mostly in the bottom edge, are visible. The white background fluoresces throughout but pigments appear original.
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.
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Painting II is the result of Miró’s active and ongoing improvisation which renders precise interpretation impossible. As is typical in Miró’s most successful works, the remarkable visual vocabulary of Painting II strikes a perfect balance between abstraction and image-signs. Full of energy and movement, Miró’s work from the 1960s is perhaps most notable for its lack of stasis. An effect identified by his friend Alexander Calder, with whom he spent much time with over the course of the decade, Calder’s mobiles and stabiles share a sense of engagement with Miró’s transitory compositions.

In the present work, hard white canvas serves as a vehicle for the interaction of saturated primarily colors with a suggestion of Miró’s hallmark green. The highly gestural and seemingly cascading figure in motion is reminiscent of the tag of an urban graffiti artist whence the economized, bold black mark is the unmistakable sign of a complex artistic persona. By means of simplification, Miró metamorphoses his surroundings, translating them into his personal iconographical vocabulary. As the artist himself stated in 1959, “my figures underwent the same simplification as my colors. Simplified as they are, they are more human and more alive than they would be if represented in all their detail. Represented in detail, they would lose their imaginary quality, which enhances everything.” (Joan Miró quoted in Margit Rowell, ed., Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, New York, 1991, p. 252)