Joan Miró

In the years 1944-46, Miró experimented with materials and formats of his works, executing several oil and gouache paintings of a narrow, elongated shape. The iconic images of the artist’s vocabulary are arranged and re-arranged in these compositions, forming constellations of human figures, birds, stars and the sun. Applied in flat patches of pure color, with no attempt of creating illusions of space and three-dimensionality, these elements are presented horizontally against a monochromatic background, resembling ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing or oriental calligraphy. In treating his canvas as a set of pictorial signs, Miró subverts the traditional notion of painting as a vertical plane creating an illusion of space and perspective, and builds a universe of his own, personal symbols and images.

Discussing a group of Miró’s works executed between 1942-45, including Femme, oiseaux, étoile, Jacques Dupin wrote that they "illustrate this reinvented universe of signs and ideograms, now liberated from ponderous weight, dramatic modeling and anguished chiaroscuro. With the zeal of impassioned exploration, yet avoiding the diffusion to which experimentation often tends, Miró discovered a language that was open, purified, and extremely mobile. It’s a language that favors alliances, permutations and metaphors, one that offers inexhaustible variations based on a clarified vocabulary and a transparent syntax. This stage of his work is characterized by a counterpoint of line and color, of brushwork either fiery or extremely delicate, with precise accent and tone, and finally, a sense of uplifting space – qualities that render works dominated by tenderness and jubilation. The eyes respond to heavenly bodies; the bodies reach out to the arms of stars" (Jacques Dupin, Miró Firebird, Paris, 1998, p. 54).