Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Aquavella Modern Art, Reno, Nevada
Bauhaus Co., Ltd., Tokyo
Private Collection, Japan (and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 3, 2003, lot 235)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner 

Yokohama, Yokohama Museum of Art, Joan Miró, Centennial Exhibition: The Pierre Matisse Collection, 1992, no. 47, illustrated in the catalogue
Sète, Musée Paul Valery, Miró: Vers l'infiniment libre, vers l'infiniment grand, 2014, n.n.

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné, Drawings, Volume I: 1901-1937, Paris, 2008, no. 773, illustrated in color p. 365

This work is in very good condition. Executed on cream wove paper. There is a light wave to the paper. The edges of the sheet are lightly matte stained. The pigment is fresh and strong. There is a very minor horizontal tear towards the center of the left edge measuring no more than 1/8 of an inch. There is a very minor loss to the right edge of the sheet measuring no more than 1/8 of an inch. Please note that these losses are not visible when the work is in its matte. There is very minor staining to the verso of the sheet.
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.

The late 1930s and early 1940s were a period of immense creativity for Miró, a time when he would develop the iconography and pictorial vocabulary that would inhabit the remainder of his unique oeuvre. Executed at the creative zenith of his pre-war period, the present work encapsulates the rising tensions in Europe at the close of the 1930s. In 1936, a right-wing coup against the government of the Second Spanish Republic unleashed a brutal civil war that weighed heavily upon the artist. Painted shortly thereafter, the present work uses an electrified palette and potent imagery that are resonant of this significant period for the artist.

In the fall of 1936, as the war advanced with no end in sight, Miró returned to Paris. Leaving behind his family (who would join him in December) and approximately one hundred unfinished canvases, Miró’s first few months in exile were shrouded with anxiety, expressed to his friend Pierre Matisse in a letter on January 12, 1937: “I feel very uprooted here and am nostalgic for my country. But what can be done? We are living through a hideous drama that will leave deep marks in our mind” (quoted in Anne Umland, Joan Miró, Painting and Anti-Painting (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008-09, p. 214). Created during this time, Deux personnages are two characters depicted as biomorphic forms that oscillate between figuration and abstraction, seeming to recall the deformation present in the work of another Catalan whose work was based on the imaginary—the architect Antoni Gaudi.

By the time he executed the present work, Miró was enjoying relative acclaim for the unmatched orginality of his paintings from the early 1930s. Herbert Read, an English poet and art critic, wrote of Miró in a publication from 1934: "Everyone must grant Miró the sensibility of a supreme artist; there are paintings of his which leave this sensibility so naked and obvious, that only the aesthetically blind can refuse to respond—pictures in which a single sensitive line explores a field of pure colour, tracing, as it were, the graph of the artist's acutest point of sensibility, registering the seismographic disturbances of a mind exposed to the assaults of the senses" (quoted in Christian Zervos, ed., Cahiers d'art, vol. 9, nos. 1-4, 1934, p. 52). Despite this positive critical acclaim, Miró eschewed any sense of artistic comfort, constantly seeking novel forms of expression within his art.