Joan Miró

Damià Caus Musons, Barcelona
Acquired from the above by the present owner

On cream wove paper. Taped to the mount in three places. Top and left edges are deckled. There are some creases in the sheet (these are added by the artist) and there several small areas where the fibres are roughened and the sheet shows abrasion (also part of the artist’s process). These are located under the arc of the blue moon and under the image, at lower left edge. Overall the work is in very good condition. The colours are bright and fresh. Colours: there is a bit more yellow in the green, red and blue tones, so they appear a shade lighter in the original than in the catalogue illustration.
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Joan Miró's Bon cop...de lluna is a striking example of the artist's mature work, characterised by both the black outlines and the thick applications of black ink. The dynamism of the present work – where moon and stars are set against a blank background with ink spatter reminiscent of the abstract expressionists – fully captures the energy and boldness that Miró embraced in the last decade of his life. On June 18^th, 1978, in an interview with Santiago Amón, discussing recent works on canvas Miró stated, 'I painted these paintings in a frenzy, with real violence, so people will know that I'm alive, that I'm breathing, that I still have a few more places to go. I'm heading in a new direction' (Margit Rowell (ed.), Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, G.K. Hall & Co, Boston, 1986, p. 301).

While the new directions and boldness of his late works are clearly visible in the present composition, one also finds Miró's traditional pictorial lexicon of signs and symbols. Stars, moon, woman, bird and sun all formed a poetic language that he implemented throughout his lifetime. Margit Rowell expands on the driving force behind Miró's work: 'What was important to Miró was the immediacy of his images, that they be impulsive, corrosive, eruptive, emptied of conventional meanings or allusions and purified to a primordial presence' (Margit Rowell (ed.), 1986, ibid., p. 10). His interest in primitive art as well as the art theory and anthropology based around this art in the 1920s and 1930s contributed to his pictorial language.