Joan Miró

Elvira & Joan Gaspar (Sala Gaspar), Barcelona (acquired from the artist)

Private Collection, Europe (by descent from the above. Sold: Sotheby's, London, 23rd June 2010, lot 301)

Private Collection (purchased at the above sale. Sold: Sotheby's, London, 20th June 2012, lot 312)

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue Raisonné. Drawings, Paris, 2012, vol. III, no. 2423, illustrated in colour p. 350

Executed with a technical assurance and economy of pictorial means typical of the last decades of Miró’s career, the present work exemplifies his mature style verging between figuration and abstraction. With its bold, spontaneous brushstrokes, this large sheet reflects the expressive power of the artist’s late work. Abandoning a more figurative approach, Miró developed a distinctive vocabulary of signs, relishing whimsical and ambiguous shapes that take form in shifting and delightful ways. As Sidra Stich suggested: 'the art of Joan Miró heralds a deep grasp of the marvellous. Beyond childlike innocence, romantic fantasy and poetic reverie, the marvellous for Miró connotes a cosmic perspective and focus on the dynamics of creation' (S. Stich, Joan Miró: the Development of a Sign Language (exhibition catalogue), Washington University, St. Louis, 1980, p. 8).

During the 1960s and 1970s Miró experimented with painting on a wide variety of supports, including canvas fragments, sack cloth, wooden boards, Masonite, newsprint and even souvenir paintings from local antique shops, which he would then score, burn and break as part of his creative process. During World War II, the artist had painted on what little canvas he could gather and turned his attention primarily to creating works on paper. The present work, executed in 1972, harks back to his era of experimentation, and builds on his previous work by incorporating a more playful mode. The pictorial lexicon and scale of the present work reflect the influence of American post-war painting, which Miró first encountered during a trip to New York in 1947. He became fascinated by the art produced by Abstract Expressionists and their new techniques as well as their aesthetic agenda. Several young painters, including Jackson Pollock, were crediting Miró as their inspiration for their wild, paint-splattered canvases. In the years that followed he created works that responded to the enthusiasm of this younger generation of American painters and the spontaneity of their art.