Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
William H. Weintraub, New York (acquired from the above)
Private Collection, USA
Private Collection, Spain
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2002

Jacques Dupin, Miró, Paris, 1961, no. 931, p. 554
Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró. Life and Work, London, 1962, no. 931, illustrated p. 570 
Guy Weelen, Miró, Paris, 1984, no. 6, p. 9
Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró. Catalogue Raisonné. Paintings, Paris, 2002, vol. IV, no. 1124, illustrated in colour p. 95

The canvas is not lined and there is no retouching visible under UV light. Apart from some minor wear to all four corners, this work is in good original condition.
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In 1956 Miró moved into a new studio built by this friend the architect José Luis Sert on the terraced hill above the beach of Calamayor near Palma. For the first few years in his new environs, he continued to abstain from painting, concentrating on lithography, engraving and ceramics. However, the advent of the 60s heralded a new creative burst inspired by Miró's iconoclastic need to reinvent himself and his art.  What is immediately apparent from the work of 1960 is that he set out to destroy his own language of figurative signs, and his painting returned to spontaneity, directness and focused on the act of painting itself.

The present work, with its total abstraction and the kinetic nature of the paintwork, illustrated the clear influence of a younger generation of artists on Miró. Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock have long acknowledged their debt to the older artist, but exposure to their canvases in turn revivified certain aspects of Miró's art. Indeed, in the present work we can see evidence of techniques derived from tachism, and the splattered paintwork illustrates the ceaseless invention and openness to new influence that characterises all of Miró's work. However, despite the adoption of new influences, the character of this work remains true to Miró's distinctive vision of reality. The two spots of colour impart a poetic aspect that embodies the wonder inherent in Miró's oeuvre, and remains based upon a metaphysical conception of nature that is rooted in his rural Spanish upbringing.

Fig. 1, Miró in his Palma studio, 1962.