Joan Miró

Galerie Berggruen, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the 1970s

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Les Européens, Paris, 1955, illustrated in colour on the back cover
Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné. Drawings, 1938-1959, Paris, 2010, vol. II, no. 1509, illustrated p. 320

Executed on buff paper, not laid down and hinged to the overmount with tape in two places along the upper edge. The right and upper edges are deckled. There are three artist's pin holes to the left edge. There is a flattened crease to the lower right corner and some mount rubbing to the right edge. The colours are fresh and vibrant and this work is in good overall condition.
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Untitled (La lune bleue) embodies Miró’s love of signs, symbols and intense primary colours and brings together some of the artist's most celebrated and iconic motifs.

Miró’s artistic ambition was to attain maximum intensity with a minimum of means. In the present work this tendency becomes apparent in the complete abandonment of depth. The moon, the star and the bird sit flat on the monochrome yellow background. Miró explained the desired effect in an interview in 1959: ‘A shaded form has less impact than one that is not shaded. Shading prevents this shock and restricts movement to one in visual depth. Without shading or chiaroscuro, there is no precise indication of depth: movement can go on to infinity’ (quoted in Yvon Taillandier, ‘I Work Like a Gardener’ in Miró, From Earth to Sky, Vienna, 2015, pp. 51-52).

The present work exemplifies how - even when his works can appear at first to be completely abstracted - they almost always retain a narrative element, conveyed via his own very particular set of recurring symbols. Relying upon the lexicon of signs and symbols that he had developed over the years, Miró aimed to convey the very thing that inspired him, ‘the shock that provoked the painting in the first place’ (ibid., pp. 50-51).

La lune bleue is a wonderful example of one of his most popular subject matters. In conversation with Yvon Taillandier he explains: ‘The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I am overwhelmed when I see a crescent moon or the sun in an immense sky. In my paintings there are often tiny forms in vast empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains – everything that has been stripped bare has always made a strong impression on me’ (ibid., p. 49).

The present work was featured on the back cover of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s legendary book Les Européens which was published in 1955. Miró’s close collaborations with numerous writers resulted in a rich output of publications with unique designs. Roland Penrose has spoken with great warmth about the importance of such collaborations and has explained ‘Books such as Paul Eluard’s A toute Epreuve, Tzara’s L’Antitête and Parler seul, René Char’s A la santé du serpant, Michel Leiris’s Bagatelles végétales, René Crevel’s La Bague d’aurore, Raymond Queneau’s Album 19 and Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi (see lot 241) are among Miró’s most brilliant achievements’ (Roland Penrose, Miró, London, 1970, pp. 164-165). A copy of Les Européens will be included with this lot.