Joan Miró

Galerie Maeght, Paris
Stephen Hahn, Paris
Carimati Collection
Sale: Christie's, London, July 3, 1979, lot 91
Acquired at the above sale

Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Miró, 1968, no. 93
Barcelona, Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu, Miró, 1968-69, no. 99
Bordeaux, Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Le Surréalisme, 1971, no. 194
New York, Acquavella Galleries, Joan Miró, 1972, no. 58
Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution; Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Miró, 1980, no. 39

Margit Rowell, Miró, New York, 1970, no. 102, catalogued p. 43
Michel Tapié, Joan Miró, Milan, 1970, no. 102
Jacques Dupin and Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue Raisonné. Paintings, Volume IV: 1958-1969, Paris, 2002, no. 1236, illustrated p. 183

The present work is one of three similarly titled compositions that Miró completed in 1966.  As the title tells us, the composition depicts the first flash at the beginning of the day, just as the sun breaks the horizon. 

Margit Rowell has indentified two opposing and concurrent styles in Miró's work of this sixties: Cosmic, denoting pure abstraction, devoid of figurative elements and predominantly gestural; and Anthropomorphic, referring to a return to the early mythical symbols of the Woman-Bird-Star series.  The present work falls into the former of the two catagories, with its cosmic display of daylight.

Miró's predelection for large-format compositions had developed from his encounters with the Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s.  By the 1950s, many of his canvases were large in scale, allowing him to paint more freely and more abstractly.  The resulting images, as in the case of the present work, were aesthetically overwhelming despite the minimal amount of objects or forms depicted in each composition.  In a discussion of Miró's work from the late 1960s, Rowell has written that, "In these paintings the economy of expression and means provides a far richer imaginative experience than his more elaborate works.  'I feel the need to achieve the maximum intensity with the minimum of means...' [the artist once said].  What could have more infinite dimensions of expression?"  (Margit Rowell, Miró, New York, 1970, p. 21).