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Impressionist & Modern Art
3259* JOANMIRÓ(Montroig 1893 - 1983 Mallorca)
Femme aux 3 cheveux, constellation. 26
July 1976.
Oil on canvas.
Signed lower right: Miró, as well as signed,
titled and inscribed and with the estate
stamp on the reverse.
27 x 19 cm.
Provenance: Private collection, Spain,
bought there by the present owner.
Literature: Dupin, Jacques/Lelong-
Mainaud, Ariane: Joan Miró, Catalogue
Raisonné, Paintings, vol. VI: 1976-1981,
Paris 2004, p. 84, no. 1809 (with ill.).
In 1976 the first exhibition of the Joan
Miró Foundation took place in Barcelona. It
presented a large selection of Miró's works
held in themuseumon permanent loan.
Miró himself was heavily involved in the
planning of the exhibition. Nevertheless, he
found time and energy to dedicate himself
to painting at the same time. The present
work "Femme aux 3 cheveux, constellation"
is fromJuly of that year and reveals the bold
aesthetic that dominates the paintings
from that festivemoment in his career.
Previously focusing on rather large-format
surfaces, Miró concentrated almost
exclusively on medium and small canvases
from the mid-1970s onwards. The later
works are most notably distinguished by
the artist's use of colour. The characte-
ristic feature is the pronounced use of
black, while the colours red, blue, yellow
and green proportionately cover only small
areas of the canvas.
At the same time, certain sequences
from the 1960s and 1970s revisited his
painting from the 1925s and 1930s in
which he dealt with Surrealism and ex-
plored his interest in symbolic language,
which would ultimately extend through
his entire artistic practice. In the 1930s,
Miró found himself in a crisis between
fantasy and imagination on the one hand,
and visible reality on the other. In the
subsequent years, he continually sought a
balance between figuration and abstrac-
tion and even though he always remained
faithful to his symbolic vocabulary, figu-
ratively recognisable forms increasingly
appeared in the background.
The painting offered here was created
within the course of a series of works
in which Miró painted the same motif in
diverse variations, always with the same
title. The dominant black and the small, but
striking splash of blue colour, as well as the
figuratively coined title and the abstract
execution thereof, comply with the period
of its creation.
The silent humour that accompanies
Miró's art is also found in our work. The
small face in the lower left corner and the
"3 cheveux" bring a smile to the viewer's
face – a reminder of why one simply must
love the artist Miró.
CHF 200 000 / 250 000
(€ 178 570 / 223 210)