Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired from the artist)

Acquavella Modern Art, Reno

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Yokohama Museum of Art, Joan Miró: centennial exhibition : the Pierre Matisse collection, 1992, no. 54

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Newport Beach, Newport Harbor Art Museum, The Interpretive Link: Abstract Surrealism into Abstract Expressionism, 1986-87, no. 74

Jacques Dupin, Miró, Barcelona, 1993, no. 283, illustrated p. 260

Between 1942 and 1943, Miró’s production was exclusively devoted to works on paper. All of these compositions explored the theme of "Woman-Bird-Star" and made use of elementary symbols that lent themselves to a variety of combinations. The artist would occasionally modify the titles of these works, as in the present composition, replacing the term "woman" with "personage." The variations on this simple theme allowed Miró to create numerous surprisingly complex and sophisticated compositions. With his endless repositioning and re-rendering of these elemental figures, Miró created a rich narrative for these figures. According to Jacques Dupin, as they "clown around, run their foolish errands, play their whimsical or mysterious games. Their enormous capacity for life is subject to no law save that of the internal logic of their birth and development. Miró’s drawing is prodigiously inventive: the hundredth woman and the hundredth bird are as new as the first or the fiftieth. What accounts for this unbroken freshness can only be the artist’s constant renewal of his means of expression, his ability to treat the artistic materials as forever fresh and untouched" (Jacques Dupin, Miró, Barcelona, 1993, p. 261).

Because paper was a readily available support that was easily transportable, Miró was able to create numerous compositions and with relative frequency. He was also extremely experimental in his execution, employing a variety of media that were compatible with paper, including pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache, pastel, oil paint, crayons and, occasionally, less conventional materials like blackberry jam. The contrast and interplay of these media offered a fascinating way for Miró to explore the expressive potential of his compositions, and their arrangement on the paper provides insight into the artist’s rendering process. Dupin tells us that for all of these compositions, "the artist’s concern was life – ‘life in all its visceral freshness,’ […] – for the living pulse and movement of life" (ibid. p. 260).