Joan Miró

Galerie Maeght, Paris

Arnold Herstand & Co., New York

Acquired from the above in 1988

Krefeld, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum & Stuttgart, Stuttgart Württembergische Staatsgalerie, 1954, no. 23

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1956, no. 64

Basel, Kunsthalle, 1956, no. 79

Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, 1962, no. 92, illustrated in the catalogue

Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, 1968, no. 50, illustrated in the catalogue

Munich, Haus der Kunst, Joan Miró, 1969, no. 68, illustrated in the catalogue

Knokke-Heist, Casino Communal, 1971, no. 37, illustrated in the catalogue

Paris, Grand Palais, Joan Miró, 1974, no. 71, illustrated in the catalogue

Milan, Castello Sforzesco, Miró Milano, 1981, no. 60, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Villenueve d'Ascq, Musée d'Art Moderne, 1986, no. 14, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Paris, Artcurial Cercle d'Art, Méditerranée, sources et formes de XXeme siècle, 1988, n.n., illustrated in color in the catalogue

Jacques Prévert & Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Joan Miró, Paris, 1956, illustrated p. 183

Eduard Hüttinger, Miró, Bern, 1957, no. 45

Jacques Dupin, Miró, Paris, 1961, no. 806, illustrated p. 423

Yves Bonnefoy, Miró, Paris, 1964, no. 52

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings, vol. III, Paris, 2001, no. 926, illustrated p. 199

The work is in excellent condition. Original canvas. Under UV light a four inch vertical hairline of inpainting is visible along the lower left edge next to the blue element as well as one nailhead-sized spot at lower left corner to address a small repair. There are four narrow lines of cracking within the black pigment of the large black element in the center of the work. There is very faint "tenting" at the top of the "C" shaped element in the upper right corner, as well as slight rubbing to the extreme edge of the upper right corner.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Painted at the creative height of Miró's post-war period, Peinture belongs to a series of works which herald the coming revolution within Modernism. The iconography is familiar within artist's oeuvre while the sheer monumentality of its scale reveals a conscious dialogue with the Abstract Expressionists working simultaneously in New York. Though the figural presence borders on the abstract, the masterful attention to form coupled with our knowledge of the artist's lexicon allow us to identify a clear figure-and-ground relationship. 

Miró developed this language of signs and symbols in the 1930s and 40s, in works such as his Constellations of the early 1940s (fig. 2). By the time he painted the current work, he had identified the figural components most salient to his exploration and spent his time fully developing their characteristics across revolutionary artistic techniques. The paintings of the early 1950s present isolated elements on a monumental scale. Contemporaneous with the artist's masterful L'oiseau au plumage déployé vole vers l'arbre argenté, the present work exemplifies the expressive and spontaneous force of the works from this period (fig. 1).

Jacques Dupin wrote with regard to Miró's works of 1952-54: "To study the form, their distribution and their composition, to elucidate the rhythms and  the distribution of the colors, gets us nowhere. Precisely because the artist has not 'elaborated,' but has let us come face to face with the pure creative act itself, our instruments of investigation are useless. And yet the brutal forms thus projected are neither arbitrary nor are they mere products of some automatism. They are always related to Miró's vocabulary of signs and other elements of his language, but they are spontaneous; they are not "worked up" emanations of this language, but a deliberate simplification of it. Hence their expressive power is all the greater; their energy has been caught at the source and let go at once, the sign being the condensed vehicle of subterranean energy that otherwise would be dispersed and lost" (J. Dupin, Miró, Barcelona & New York, 1993, p. 294).

By the late 1940s, Miró had already become acquainted with the new techniques and aesthetic agenda of the Abstract Expressionists. He first saw their work in New York in 1947, and the experience, the artist would later recall, was like "a blow to the solar plexus." Several young painters, including Willem de Kooning, were crediting Miró as their inspiration in the dialogue between figuration and abstraction (fig. 3). Miró was both flattered and awed by the acknowledgement, not knowing immediately what to think of it. But in the years that followed he created works that responded to the enthusiasm of this younger generation of American painters and the spontaneity of their art. The paintings he subsequently created are a fascinating response to these new trends of abstraction, but also they show Miró's allegiance to his own artistic pursuits. "For me a form is never something abstract," he said at the end of the 1940s, "it is always a sign of something. It is always a man, a bird, or something else. For me painting is never form for form's sake" (quoted in Margit Rowell, Joan Miró, Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1986, p. 207).

In a dialogue between Miró and Rafael Santos Torroella in March 1951, the artist offered advice to young painters, and his words are an insight into the point of view and underlying motivations that inspired the present work: "He who wants to really achieve something has to flee from things that are easy and pay no attention to... artistic bureaucracy, which is completely lacking in spiritual concerns. What is more absurd than killing yourself to copy a highlight on a bottle? If that was all painting was about, it wouldn't be worth the effort." In response, Torroella asked, "What about abstract art then," to which Miró replied, "No. That is not the way to spiritual freedom. You don't gain even a centimeter of freedom from art that's governed by cold formulas. You only get your freedom by sweating for it, by an inner struggle" (quoted in M. Rowell, op. cit., p. 226).