Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Acquavella Galleries, New York
Private Collection, Florida
James Goodman Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in January 2006

Sculptures de Miró: céramiques de Miró et Llorens Artigas (exhibition catalogue), Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul, 1973, no. 127, illustration of another cast
Alain Jouffroy & Joan Teixidor, Miró Sculptures, Paris, 1974, no. 190, illustration of another cast p. 136
Fundació Joan Miró, Obra de Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1979, no. 317, illustration of another cast p. 173
Joan Miró: Peintures, sculptures, dessins, céramiques, 1956-1979 (exhibition catalogue), Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul, 1979, no. 262, catalogued p. 187
Emilio Fernández Miró & Pilar Ortega Chapel, Joan Miró. Sculptures. Catalogue raisonné, 1928-1982, Paris, 2006, no. 238, colour illustration of another cast p. 238

Light green and brown patina applied unevenly, probably by the artist. This work is in good original condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate, although brighter in the original.
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Miró's totemic Femme is among the most arresting of the artist's late sculptures, created by assembling a selection of bizarre found objects and casting them in bronze. Its very genesis places it firmly in the realm of the Surrealist marvellous, a concept so profound that it gave creative impetus to almost everything which the movement produced and informed much of its theory. Each composite element – be it  a bottle, a coin or a scrap of metal – is transfigured by the casting process and together, in the viewer's eye, they are assimilated into the form of an improbable being: an automaton, a cadavre exquis, a portent of repressed desires.

The present work is imbued with great significance when seen in the context of the Surrealist's preoccupation with the femme fatale and, in particular, with occurrences of this phenomenal figure in myth and in nature. One such example features time and again in Surrealist imagery: the female Mantis (fig. 1). This spectral predator was venerated for its ability to mimic its environment and for its uniquely cannibalistic tendencies. For the Surrealists, this combination of eroticism and death was all too tempting. Miró's insectoid Femme, distinguished by its richly textured polychrome patina, appears almost organic, almost camouflaged. Seemingly inert, its stilted pose threatens something imminent, potentially fatal. And yet this phantasm is the product of mere everyday objects, given meaning only by the artist's whim; true to Surrealist principles, Miró demonstrates how the marvellous is always present in even the most banal of objects.

Fig. 1, 'Magie prestigieuse chez la manta mendica', photograph by Le Charles published in Minotaure, no. 7, 1935, p. 8