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Lot 146
Joan Miró (1893-1983)
Femmes, oiseau, étoile
Closed20 October 2017
Price Realised
EUR 271,500
More Information
Joan Miró (1893-1983)
Femmes, oiseau, étoile
signé, daté, titré et inscrit 'Miró. 1944 femmes, oiseau, étoile' (au revers)
huile sur toile
15.7 x 58.3 cm.
Peint en 1944
signed, dated, titled and inscribed 'Miró. 1944 femmes, oiseau, étoile' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
6 1/8 x 23 in.
Painted in 1944
Femmes, oiseau, étoile
signé, daté, titré et inscrit 'Miró. 1944 femmes, oiseau, étoile' (au revers)
huile sur toile
15.7 x 58.3 cm.
Peint en 1944
signed, dated, titled and inscribed 'Miró. 1944 femmes, oiseau, étoile' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
6 1/8 x 23 in.
Painted in 1944
Joan Miró (1893-1983)
Femmes, oiseau, étoile
signé, daté, titré et inscrit 'Miró. 1944 femmes, oiseau, étoile' (au revers)
huile sur toile
15.7 x 58.3 cm.
Peint en 1944
signed, dated, titled and inscribed 'Miró. 1944 femmes, oiseau, étoile' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
6 1/8 x 23 in.
Painted in 1944
Femmes, oiseau, étoile
signé, daté, titré et inscrit 'Miró. 1944 femmes, oiseau, étoile' (au revers)
huile sur toile
15.7 x 58.3 cm.
Peint en 1944
signed, dated, titled and inscribed 'Miró. 1944 femmes, oiseau, étoile' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
6 1/8 x 23 in.
Painted in 1944
Monsieur et Madame Herbert M. Rothschild, Ossining, N.Y. (avant 1961).
Galería Oriol, Barcelone (avant 2001).
Collection particulière, Europe (acquis auprès de celle-ci).
Galería Oriol, Barcelone (avant 2001).
Collection particulière, Europe (acquis auprès de celle-ci).
J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 1961, p. 532, no. 627 (illustré).
J. Dupin et A. Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné, Paintings, Paris, 2001, vol. III, p. 57, no. 724 (illustré en couleurs).
J. Dupin et A. Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné, Paintings, Paris, 2001, vol. III, p. 57, no. 724 (illustré en couleurs).
Femmes, oiseau, étoile: ces trois mots sont les points culminants de la maturité artistique de Miró, qualifiée par la formulation de son propre vocabulaire pictural qu’il avait initié dans les années 1920. Étant un leit motiv dans sa poésie picturale à partir des années 1940 jusqu’à sa mort, femmes, oiseaux et étoiles sont ses propres pictogrammes qui peuvent être résumés en seul mot : liberté, comme l’a souligné Rosia Maria Mallet, directrice de la Fondation Joan Miró à Barcelone, lorsqu’elle décrivit en une phrase l’exposition “Joan Miró : Femmes, Oiseaux, Etoiles” (cité in A.J. Yackley, Miró at play with women, birds and stars in Istanbul show, Reuters (en ligne), 2 mars 2015). La présente œuvre réalisée en 1944, année critique pour l’Europe, témoigne du travail de l’artiste qui distille ici ses pictogrammes issus de sa fameuse série des Constellations, qu’il avait complétée en 1940-1941 entre Majorque et Montroig, et souligne l’importance de ces pictogrammes dans l’œuvre de Miró. La manière dont Femmes, oiseau, étoile a été peinte sur un bout étroit de toile très fine, tel un parchemin, semble suggérer une suite insensée de pictogrammes hiéroglyphiques ou de codes énigmatiques. Cependant, Miró extrait et préserve seulement les trois éléments essentiels de ses Constellations, à savoir, la femme, l’oiseau et l’étoile. Le concept de retourner aux sources et revenir à un état primitif dans un contexte de guerre mondiale marque la réaction de l’artiste par rapport à la situation politique qu’il illustre dans cette composition réduite à quatre “signes” picturaux. C’est justement la simplicité de la composition, soutenue par quelques points de couleurs primaires, qui accentue le poids émotionnel et pictural des “signes” de Miró, comme l’a souligné Jacques Dupin, “les variations sur ce thème d’une extrême simplicité sont d’autant plus riches, plus complexes et plus époustouflantes, parce que justement le thème est si rudimentaire” (J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 2004, p. 261).
Femmes, oiseau, étoile – “Women, bird, star”: these three words epitomise Joan Miró’s mature work, defined by the formulation of his own pictorial vocabulary which he had first started exploring as early as the mid-1920s. A leit motiv in Miró’s œuvre from the early 1940s until his death, women, birds and stars appear as his own personal pictograms in his works, that can be coined into one word: freedom, as pointed out by Rosia Maria Mallet, director of Barcelona’s Joan Miró Foundation, when summing up the seminal show titled “Joan Miró: Women, Birds, Stars” (quoted in A.J. Yackley, Miró at play with women, birds and stars in Istanbul show, Reuters (online), 2nd March 2015). The present lot, executed in the historically critical year for Europe of 1944, demonstrates the artist’s distillation of his pictograms elaborated a few years earlier in his renowned Constellation series completed in 1940-1941 between Mallorca and Montroig, and highlights their significance within the corpus of Miro’s work. Executed on a thin and narrow loose piece of canvas, similar to a scroll, Femmes, oiseau, étoile almost appears like a nonsensical sequence of hieroglyphic pictograms or enigmatic codes. However, Miró stripped bare his Constellation series of its essentials: the woman, the bird and the star. Going back to his roots and longing for a state of untouched nature in the context of a world war transcribes the artist’s reaction to the political situation illustrated in this composition that has been reduced to four pictorial “sign”’. It is precisely the composition’s simplicity, heightened by a very restrained use of colour, that highlight the emotional and pictorial weight of Miró’s ‘signs”, as clearly stated by Jacques Dupin who writes that, “the variations on this extremely simple theme are all the richer, more complex and baffling, because the theme is so elementary” (J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 2004, p. 261).
Femmes, oiseau, étoile – “Women, bird, star”: these three words epitomise Joan Miró’s mature work, defined by the formulation of his own pictorial vocabulary which he had first started exploring as early as the mid-1920s. A leit motiv in Miró’s œuvre from the early 1940s until his death, women, birds and stars appear as his own personal pictograms in his works, that can be coined into one word: freedom, as pointed out by Rosia Maria Mallet, director of Barcelona’s Joan Miró Foundation, when summing up the seminal show titled “Joan Miró: Women, Birds, Stars” (quoted in A.J. Yackley, Miró at play with women, birds and stars in Istanbul show, Reuters (online), 2nd March 2015). The present lot, executed in the historically critical year for Europe of 1944, demonstrates the artist’s distillation of his pictograms elaborated a few years earlier in his renowned Constellation series completed in 1940-1941 between Mallorca and Montroig, and highlights their significance within the corpus of Miro’s work. Executed on a thin and narrow loose piece of canvas, similar to a scroll, Femmes, oiseau, étoile almost appears like a nonsensical sequence of hieroglyphic pictograms or enigmatic codes. However, Miró stripped bare his Constellation series of its essentials: the woman, the bird and the star. Going back to his roots and longing for a state of untouched nature in the context of a world war transcribes the artist’s reaction to the political situation illustrated in this composition that has been reduced to four pictorial “sign”’. It is precisely the composition’s simplicity, heightened by a very restrained use of colour, that highlight the emotional and pictorial weight of Miró’s ‘signs”, as clearly stated by Jacques Dupin who writes that, “the variations on this extremely simple theme are all the richer, more complex and baffling, because the theme is so elementary” (J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 2004, p. 261).