Joan Miró *
(Montroig 1893–1983 Palma de Mallorca)
Untitled, 1977, signed, oil, monotype enhanced with oil on Japan Paper on canvas, 48.5 x 58 cm, framed
This work has been registered by the A. D. O. M. (Association pour la Défense de l‘Oeuvre de Joan Miró) and is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity signed by Jacques Dupin, dated May 10, 2005
This work is accompanied by a photo certificate signed by Ariane Lelong-Mainaud (A. D. O. M.) dated March 22, 2012
Provenance:
Lydie Dutrou Collection, Paris
Galerie Arenthon, ParisGalleria Il Castello, Milan
Michele Preda Collection, Milan
European Private Collection
Sale, Dorotheum Vienna, 28 November 2012, lot 1232
European Private Collection
Exhibited:
Milan, Miró: quando il Cielo fa..., Galleria Il Castello, March – April 2006, exh. cat. no. 21, p. 50, with ill.
Shanxi, Joan Miró: Memories and Dreams – Miro‘s Garden, Contemporary Art Museum, 18 September – 10 December 2022
then Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art, 19 December 2022 – 5 March 2023
Literature:
J. Dupin, A. Lelong-Mainaud (ed.) Joan Mirò Drawings: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. V, Daniel Lelong and Successió Miró Publishers, 2015, p. 355, no. 4217 with ill.
We find traces of imaginary worlds in the works of Joan Miró. Both light-hearted and pensive, the Catalan artist stated that he was inspired by his emotions and that he understood nothing about the theory of art. A melancholy rebel, he considered reality to be an accessory of the imagination, so that all he had around him was reduced to an optional, to be translated into a form extraneous to the referent. One could say that he intended to separate objectivity from mere representation, giving reality the opportunity to generate new and manifold interpretations.
His sometimes cryptic poetics were based on the magic of a style capable of reducing reality to a collection of allusions. Everything had to be determined by rotating metaphors, while invention had to sustain the image, in order to give it continuity beyond the degeneration of any kind of ultimate goal. Therefore, his imagery can be seen as metaphors, arabesques, as the enfolding of a soul that was integrated with reality for a privilege conceded only to poetry. This privilege consists in being above the principle of any contradiction, stating that life has meaning, but is also absurd, helping you understand a mysterious image by using a paradox, just as a colour or a pencilled line can express both joy and desperation.
For the artist, pigments and creativity are the segments marking the various stages of his existence. Through his anecdotal painting and a sea of images that seem to germinate from hidden vibrations, Miró has given us an original interpretation of the world, reducing emotions out of all proportion compared with reality, to something like a dream to be lived within the mysterious space of an untranslatable script. It is as though his eye ran along the surface of the world at the speed of a spaceship and that everything seemed immensely impenetrable - as if he only had time to sketch a few rapid lines, with his hand moving like the pen on a seismograph that has gone out of control. Or, in a silent, nocturnal setting, it seems as though time has rolled down the stairs of the days; and, thinking of the past, he seems to linger on the doorstep of an unknown horizon in premeditated expectation, hoping that someone will put the strips of melancholy at the corners of the world into some kind of order.
Franco Basile
“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”
Joan Miro: Selected Writings and Interviews“. Book by Joan Miró, editing by M. Rowell, Thames and Hudson, 1987
Bid on this lot
(Montroig 1893–1983 Palma de Mallorca)
Untitled, 1977, signed, oil, monotype enhanced with oil on Japan Paper on canvas, 48.5 x 58 cm, framed
This work has been registered by the A. D. O. M. (Association pour la Défense de l‘Oeuvre de Joan Miró) and is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity signed by Jacques Dupin, dated May 10, 2005
This work is accompanied by a photo certificate signed by Ariane Lelong-Mainaud (A. D. O. M.) dated March 22, 2012
Provenance:
Lydie Dutrou Collection, Paris
Galerie Arenthon, ParisGalleria Il Castello, Milan
Michele Preda Collection, Milan
European Private Collection
Sale, Dorotheum Vienna, 28 November 2012, lot 1232
European Private Collection
Exhibited:
Milan, Miró: quando il Cielo fa..., Galleria Il Castello, March – April 2006, exh. cat. no. 21, p. 50, with ill.
Shanxi, Joan Miró: Memories and Dreams – Miro‘s Garden, Contemporary Art Museum, 18 September – 10 December 2022
then Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art, 19 December 2022 – 5 March 2023
Literature:
J. Dupin, A. Lelong-Mainaud (ed.) Joan Mirò Drawings: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. V, Daniel Lelong and Successió Miró Publishers, 2015, p. 355, no. 4217 with ill.
We find traces of imaginary worlds in the works of Joan Miró. Both light-hearted and pensive, the Catalan artist stated that he was inspired by his emotions and that he understood nothing about the theory of art. A melancholy rebel, he considered reality to be an accessory of the imagination, so that all he had around him was reduced to an optional, to be translated into a form extraneous to the referent. One could say that he intended to separate objectivity from mere representation, giving reality the opportunity to generate new and manifold interpretations.
His sometimes cryptic poetics were based on the magic of a style capable of reducing reality to a collection of allusions. Everything had to be determined by rotating metaphors, while invention had to sustain the image, in order to give it continuity beyond the degeneration of any kind of ultimate goal. Therefore, his imagery can be seen as metaphors, arabesques, as the enfolding of a soul that was integrated with reality for a privilege conceded only to poetry. This privilege consists in being above the principle of any contradiction, stating that life has meaning, but is also absurd, helping you understand a mysterious image by using a paradox, just as a colour or a pencilled line can express both joy and desperation.
For the artist, pigments and creativity are the segments marking the various stages of his existence. Through his anecdotal painting and a sea of images that seem to germinate from hidden vibrations, Miró has given us an original interpretation of the world, reducing emotions out of all proportion compared with reality, to something like a dream to be lived within the mysterious space of an untranslatable script. It is as though his eye ran along the surface of the world at the speed of a spaceship and that everything seemed immensely impenetrable - as if he only had time to sketch a few rapid lines, with his hand moving like the pen on a seismograph that has gone out of control. Or, in a silent, nocturnal setting, it seems as though time has rolled down the stairs of the days; and, thinking of the past, he seems to linger on the doorstep of an unknown horizon in premeditated expectation, hoping that someone will put the strips of melancholy at the corners of the world into some kind of order.
Franco Basile
“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”
Joan Miro: Selected Writings and Interviews“. Book by Joan Miró, editing by M. Rowell, Thames and Hudson, 1987
