JOAN MIRÓ | Conque

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Acquavella Gallery, New York
Irving Galleries, Palm Beach
Acquired from the above

Miró: Sculpture in bronze and ceramic, 1967-69 (exhibition catalogue), Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1970, no. 1, illustration of another cast n.p.
Miró: Sculptures (exhibition catalogue), Galerie Maeght, Paris, 1970, no. 5, illustration of another cast p. 28
Miró: Sculptures (exhibition catalogue), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland & traveling, 1971, no. 70, illustration of another cast
Miró Bronzes (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London, 1972, no. 31, illustration of another cast p. 38
Sculptures de Miró, ceramiques de Miró et Llorens Artigas (exhibition catalogue), Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1973, no. 93, illustration of another cast p. 137
Alain Jouffrey & Joan Teixidor, Miró sculptures, Paris, 1974, no. 120, illustration of another cast p. 78
Joan Miró (exhibition catalogue), Grand Palais, Paris, 1974, no. 249, illustration of another cast p. 96
Miró: cent sculptures 1962-78 (exhibition catalogue), Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris, 1978, no. 40, illustration of another cast p. 53
Miró Escultor (exhibition catalogue), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1987, no. 61, illustrated p. 136
Pere Gimferrer, The Roots of Miró, Barcelona, 1993, no. 1215, p. 403
Franco Basile, Joan Miró, Bologna, 1997, illustration of another cast in color p. 227
Emilio Fernández Miró & Pilar Ortega Chapel, Joan Miró, Sculptures. Catalogue Raisonné, 1928-1982, Paris, 2006, no. 135, illustration of another cast in color p. 144

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“It all begins with an impromptu harvest. Miró slips out of his studio like a shadow and comes back loaded down like a peddler with worthless, unusable things...an almond, a pebble, a tube of paste, a snail's shell...and the list could be extended infinitely, as could the possible associations and metamorphoses of these objects. These rejects, insignificant objects which Miró makes his own, are the source of staggering richness. They smell of the beach, the dock, the sewer and the port, all of which are congested with trifles and marvels and the refuse of life lives” (Jacques Dupin, “Miró as Sculptor,” in Miró Sculptures (exhibition catalogue), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1971, p. 2). In his 1969 sculpture Conque, Miró takes one of the many seashells scattered along the beaches by his Majorca studio and transforms the found object into large-scale representation of the female form. The folds of the conch shell create an hourglass recession down the center of the sculpture that resembles a womanly figure, while the two protuberances to the midpoint may read as breasts. Like the Paleolithic stone carvings of goddesses of fertility, such as the famed Venus of Willendorf, with their exaggerated secondary sexual characteristic and absence of facial features, the present work achieves a universal status as a representation of woman, source of all creation. Miró breathes life into the inorganic matter he assembled.