C reated in 1981 at the end of Miró’s career, Fantôme de l'Atelier embodies the expansive artistic qualities Miró experimented with at this time. Just two years before his death, working in a spacious new studio, Miró was not constrained by style or medium. Instead, his works found their way “into a vast and complex delta, where any attempt at chronology no longer holds sway” (Jacques Dupin, Miró, New York, 1993). The various influences of Miró’s lifetime melt together across media—in this case, paint, ink, pencil and collage.

In Fantôme de l'Atelier, Miró paints with a familiar palette and facture, but his colorful, geometric forms are contained within a dark, anthropomorphic mass. The suggestion of the figurative is both playful and haunting, an effect heightened by the elderly Miró’s self-reflective title, which translates to “Phantom of the Workshop.”

While the loose brushstrokes surrounding the figure are subtly expressive, the light pencil marks perhaps indicate the artist’s process in drafting a series of Fantôme de l'Atelier prints. This is the final study for that series and has a print executed on its reverse. The colorful, evocative Fantôme de l'Atelier prints were issued in 1987, four years after Miró’s death, in a series of 65 by Atelier Lacourière et Frélaut, Paris. Thus, this work is a unique instance of the composition as executed by the artist’s hand, with his richly textured, multimedia approach.

Miró’s taste toward the end of his career for multimedia compositions containing shapes both figurative and abstract—both heavy and light—is evident in Sans titre from 1977. Like Fantôme de l'Atelier, this work positions Miró’s bright fields of color among heavy swaths of black.