Joan MIRO (1893-1983)
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Art on paper Bird
Chronology : 1920-1929 1924 1925 1927 1933 1940 1945 1949
See also : Art on paper Bird
Chronology : 1920-1929 1924 1925 1927 1933 1940 1945 1949
Psychological Profile of Joan Miró: Insights from His Life and Art
Joan Miró (1893–1983), the Catalan surrealist painter, sculptor, and ceramicist, exhibited a complex psychological makeup shaped by recurrent depression, a deep engagement with the subconscious, and a resilient, childlike optimism expressed through his art. While not a formal clinical diagnosis, an informal psychological evaluation based on biographical accounts and analyses of his work reveals patterns consistent with cyclic or recurrent depressive episodes, compensated by creative sublimation and a playful regression to primitive, dream-like states.
Early Life and Mental Health Struggles
Miró's psychological vulnerabilities emerged early. At age 18 (around 1911), after reluctantly working as a clerk to please his parents, he suffered a severe nervous breakdown followed by typhoid fever, leading to months of convalescence at the family farm in Mont-roig, Catalonia. This episode marked the beginning of lifelong recurrent depression. Miró himself acknowledged that without painting, he became "very depressed, gloomy" with "black ideas," suggesting art served as a therapeutic outlet to manage dark thoughts and emotional chaos.
Biographers and studies note he experienced multiple depressive episodes throughout his life, often linked to external stressors like poverty in the 1920s, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and World War II. During periods of hardship in Paris, extreme hunger induced hallucinations that directly influenced his "dream paintings."
Influence of Psychoanalysis and Surrealism
Miró's art was profoundly shaped by psychoanalytic ideas, particularly Sigmund Freud's theories on the unconscious, dreams, and repression, which underpinned Surrealism in the 1920s. Though he never fully joined the Surrealist group (refusing to sign their manifesto), Miró employed automatic drawing and painting—techniques to bypass rational control and access the subconscious—evident in works from the mid-1920s.
His "hallucinations from hunger" in Paris led to bizarre, floating forms, reflecting a deliberate induction of altered states to tap into primal instincts. Psychoanalytic interpretations of his paintings often highlight themes of sex, procreation, fear, and escape (e.g., recurring ladders symbolizing flight from despair). Biomorphic shapes—organic, amoeba-like forms—inspired by microscopic organisms and Catalan folk art, evoke the id's raw, libidinal energy, blending childlike innocence with erotic or aggressive undertones.
The Harlequin's Carnival (1924–1925): A chaotic interior filled with whimsical creatures and objects, painted during a period of poverty and hallucinations. The ladder symbolizes escape from inner turmoil.
The Tilled Field (1923–1924): Hybrid animals and distorted forms in a Catalan landscape, blending realism with surreal fantasy, reflecting repressed Catalan identity under political oppression.
Personality Traits Inferred from Art and Behavior
Portraits of Miró reveal a serious, introspective demeanor, consistent with his reported melancholy.
In summary, Miró's psychology appears marked by vulnerability to depression, mitigated by artistic sublimation of unconscious material. His work transforms personal and collective trauma into liberating, universal symbols of freedom and wonder, offering viewers an escape similar to his own. This blend of vulnerability and vitality underscores his enduring appeal.
Joan Miró (1893–1983), the Catalan surrealist painter, sculptor, and ceramicist, exhibited a complex psychological makeup shaped by recurrent depression, a deep engagement with the subconscious, and a resilient, childlike optimism expressed through his art. While not a formal clinical diagnosis, an informal psychological evaluation based on biographical accounts and analyses of his work reveals patterns consistent with cyclic or recurrent depressive episodes, compensated by creative sublimation and a playful regression to primitive, dream-like states.
Early Life and Mental Health Struggles
Miró's psychological vulnerabilities emerged early. At age 18 (around 1911), after reluctantly working as a clerk to please his parents, he suffered a severe nervous breakdown followed by typhoid fever, leading to months of convalescence at the family farm in Mont-roig, Catalonia. This episode marked the beginning of lifelong recurrent depression. Miró himself acknowledged that without painting, he became "very depressed, gloomy" with "black ideas," suggesting art served as a therapeutic outlet to manage dark thoughts and emotional chaos.
Biographers and studies note he experienced multiple depressive episodes throughout his life, often linked to external stressors like poverty in the 1920s, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and World War II. During periods of hardship in Paris, extreme hunger induced hallucinations that directly influenced his "dream paintings."
Influence of Psychoanalysis and Surrealism
Miró's art was profoundly shaped by psychoanalytic ideas, particularly Sigmund Freud's theories on the unconscious, dreams, and repression, which underpinned Surrealism in the 1920s. Though he never fully joined the Surrealist group (refusing to sign their manifesto), Miró employed automatic drawing and painting—techniques to bypass rational control and access the subconscious—evident in works from the mid-1920s.
His "hallucinations from hunger" in Paris led to bizarre, floating forms, reflecting a deliberate induction of altered states to tap into primal instincts. Psychoanalytic interpretations of his paintings often highlight themes of sex, procreation, fear, and escape (e.g., recurring ladders symbolizing flight from despair). Biomorphic shapes—organic, amoeba-like forms—inspired by microscopic organisms and Catalan folk art, evoke the id's raw, libidinal energy, blending childlike innocence with erotic or aggressive undertones.
The Harlequin's Carnival (1924–1925): A chaotic interior filled with whimsical creatures and objects, painted during a period of poverty and hallucinations. The ladder symbolizes escape from inner turmoil.
The Tilled Field (1923–1924): Hybrid animals and distorted forms in a Catalan landscape, blending realism with surreal fantasy, reflecting repressed Catalan identity under political oppression.
Personality Traits Inferred from Art and Behavior
- Introversion and Sensitivity — Described as orderly, punctilious, and self-contained, Miró was privately rebellious, channeling sensitivity to political repression (e.g., Franco's regime) into symbolic protest.
- Childlike Regression and Playfulness — His mature style—vibrant colors, simplified forms, stars, birds, and women—suggests a defensive regression to childhood wonder as an antidote to pessimism. Miró admitted his nature was "pessimistic," but art allowed escape into joy and spontaneity.
- Resilience Through Sublimation — Painting acted as therapy; without it, depression worsened. His prolific output (thousands of works across media) indicates high creative drive, possibly linked to mood disorders common among artists.
- Ambivalence Toward Reality — Works alternate between poetic fantasy and harsh critique (e.g., darker pieces during wars), mirroring internal conflict between fanciful impulses and modern life's brutality.
Portraits of Miró reveal a serious, introspective demeanor, consistent with his reported melancholy.
In summary, Miró's psychology appears marked by vulnerability to depression, mitigated by artistic sublimation of unconscious material. His work transforms personal and collective trauma into liberating, universal symbols of freedom and wonder, offering viewers an escape similar to his own. This blend of vulnerability and vitality underscores his enduring appeal.
Special Report
Automatism
Joan Miró’s automatic drawing techniques were central to his engagement with Surrealism in the 1920s, allowing him to access the subconscious and bypass rational control. Influenced by André Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme (1924) and peers like André Masson on Rue Blomet in Paris, Miró adopted automatism(psychic automatism) as a way to generate spontaneous, unmediated marks that revealed hidden desires, dreams, and poetic associations.
Core Principles of Miró’s Automatism
The Birth of the World (1925) stands as a landmark of Miró’s automatism. He created a mottled, atmospheric ground with washes and stains, then added sparse, floating black lines, a red circle (like a balloon or sun), a black triangle, and other minimal forms. The result feels like primordial creation emerging from chaos—raw automatic gestures refined into a cosmic, dreamlike space.
Early automatic drawings (1920s) often feature dense, tangled black lines on paper—scribbles evolving into faces, bodies, or hybrid creatures. These served as studies or independent works, emphasizing energy and fluidity over representation.
Later evolution: By the 1930s–1940s (e.g., Drawing-Collage, 1936), Miró used automatic lines as a base for collage and more defined figures. In works like The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers(1941), spontaneous drawing merges with recognizable (yet surreal) imagery.
Broader Context and Legacy
Miró’s approach differed from Masson’s more frenzied, violent automatism: it retained a poetic, playful Catalan sensibility—childlike yet profound. Automatism helped him “assassinate painting” by rejecting traditional composition for a hybrid of drawing, painting, and poetry. This technique influenced Abstract Expressionists (e.g., Pollock’s drips) and remains a staple in art education for unlocking creativity. To experiment yourself: Use a large sheet, close your eyes or work quickly without judgment, let lines wander, then pause to see what subconscious forms suggest. Miró’s automatism bridged raw subconscious energy with masterful control, defining his unique surreal language of signs, stars, and infinite possibility.
Core Principles of Miró’s Automatism
- Suppression of conscious control: The artist lets the hand move freely across the surface, often starting without a preconceived image. This produces fluid, meandering lines, doodle-like forms, and chance encounters between shapes.
- Doodling as revelation: Miró described working with “absolute disdain for painting” in the mid-1920s, detaching from observation to let subconscious imagery emerge. Lines might suggest biomorphic (organic, amoeba-like) figures, stars, eyes, birds, or sexual symbols that he later refined.
- Not purely non-objective: Unlike stricter automatists, Miró’s hand was guided by the unconscious but often followed by conscious elaboration. He called this balance “conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness.”
- Working on large canvases or paper with diluted paint, charcoal, or ink for loose, flowing marks.
- Inducing altered states (hunger, fatigue, or immersion in poetry) to heighten spontaneity.
- Starting with random lines or stains, then responding to what appeared—transforming accidents into symbols.
- Combining with peinture-poème by adding handwritten text or integrating found elements.
The Birth of the World (1925) stands as a landmark of Miró’s automatism. He created a mottled, atmospheric ground with washes and stains, then added sparse, floating black lines, a red circle (like a balloon or sun), a black triangle, and other minimal forms. The result feels like primordial creation emerging from chaos—raw automatic gestures refined into a cosmic, dreamlike space.
Early automatic drawings (1920s) often feature dense, tangled black lines on paper—scribbles evolving into faces, bodies, or hybrid creatures. These served as studies or independent works, emphasizing energy and fluidity over representation.
Later evolution: By the 1930s–1940s (e.g., Drawing-Collage, 1936), Miró used automatic lines as a base for collage and more defined figures. In works like The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers(1941), spontaneous drawing merges with recognizable (yet surreal) imagery.
Broader Context and Legacy
Miró’s approach differed from Masson’s more frenzied, violent automatism: it retained a poetic, playful Catalan sensibility—childlike yet profound. Automatism helped him “assassinate painting” by rejecting traditional composition for a hybrid of drawing, painting, and poetry. This technique influenced Abstract Expressionists (e.g., Pollock’s drips) and remains a staple in art education for unlocking creativity. To experiment yourself: Use a large sheet, close your eyes or work quickly without judgment, let lines wander, then pause to see what subconscious forms suggest. Miró’s automatism bridged raw subconscious energy with masterful control, defining his unique surreal language of signs, stars, and infinite possibility.
1924 Portrait de Mme K
2026 SOLD for $ 54M by Christie's
Joan Miro first visited Paris in 1920 after appreciating the Dada movement in periodicals. Back to Paris in the next year, he was lent a studio by Gargallo next door to André Masson.
At that time avant-garde poets sought the automatic writing through the subconscious. At the end of 1923 Miro transposes these conceptions to pictorial art, anticipating by a few years Picasso's commitment to surrealism and Dali's obsessions.
Miro already considers his work to be anti-art, at the opposite of all conventions. He renounces all realism to express lyricism. His landscapes are populated with figures stylized like children's drawings. The eye is appealed by a few splashes of color on a pale monochrome background. Elements of body are dispersed within the dreamlike compositions.
In 1924 his preoccupation is pornographic. He is 31 years old and needs a woman.
The work titled Portrait de Mme K is prepared in Paris from March 1924. The most visible element of the disintegrated portrait is the oversized sex with pubic hair. The head is a black silhouette with a hanging cigarette holder. The burning heart is shaped like a bunch of flowing spermatozoids. A love arrow hits the body column.
Acquired from Max Ernst by René Gaffé in 1926, this charcoal, colored crayon, pastel, sanguine, white chalk and pencil on blanc de Meudon primed canvas 116 x 91 cm was sold from the latter's estate for $ 12.7M by Christie's on November 6, 2001, lot 14. It was sold for $ 54M by Christie's on May 18, 2026, lot 6A in the sale of the Newhouse collection.
Danseuse Espagnole is a simplified monochrome work of the same theme, prepared at the same time. Dominated by the black head and the diagonal cigarette holder, it includes a jeweled forearm with its hand, and a pierced breast. This monumental mixed technique on canvas 240 x 150 cm was sold by Christie's for $ 9M in the same sale of the Gaffé collection, lot 16.
He develops the symbol of the man-tree, which is a link between ground and sky. The roots are replaced by bare legs below a stretched male sex. The arms are made of small side branches. The top of the figure is a mix between head and sun, with a single eye and cat whiskers. Le Piège, painted in Miro's Montroig Catalan home farm during the summer of 1924, is a demonstrator of the new style.
The work is preceded by a preparatory drawing which facilitates its deciphering. The trap on the beach is a kind of lobster rack in the shape of a female sex. It is beyond the reach of the sperm stream but awaits the rabbit and the hen which are walking in the foreground like innocent victims.
Breton is delighted. He immediately acquires the painting that he would keep throughout his life. This 92 x 73 cm oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas was sold for £ 5.3M by Christie's on March 23, 2021, lot 115.
The surrealist influence on Miro faded in the following year with the first abstract works, sometimes overwritten with a short poem. As early as 1926, a work by Miro and Ernst for the Ballets Russes was considered a bourgeois drift by the surrealists and their communist friends. Miro will keep his creative autonomy intact.
At that time avant-garde poets sought the automatic writing through the subconscious. At the end of 1923 Miro transposes these conceptions to pictorial art, anticipating by a few years Picasso's commitment to surrealism and Dali's obsessions.
Miro already considers his work to be anti-art, at the opposite of all conventions. He renounces all realism to express lyricism. His landscapes are populated with figures stylized like children's drawings. The eye is appealed by a few splashes of color on a pale monochrome background. Elements of body are dispersed within the dreamlike compositions.
In 1924 his preoccupation is pornographic. He is 31 years old and needs a woman.
The work titled Portrait de Mme K is prepared in Paris from March 1924. The most visible element of the disintegrated portrait is the oversized sex with pubic hair. The head is a black silhouette with a hanging cigarette holder. The burning heart is shaped like a bunch of flowing spermatozoids. A love arrow hits the body column.
Acquired from Max Ernst by René Gaffé in 1926, this charcoal, colored crayon, pastel, sanguine, white chalk and pencil on blanc de Meudon primed canvas 116 x 91 cm was sold from the latter's estate for $ 12.7M by Christie's on November 6, 2001, lot 14. It was sold for $ 54M by Christie's on May 18, 2026, lot 6A in the sale of the Newhouse collection.
Danseuse Espagnole is a simplified monochrome work of the same theme, prepared at the same time. Dominated by the black head and the diagonal cigarette holder, it includes a jeweled forearm with its hand, and a pierced breast. This monumental mixed technique on canvas 240 x 150 cm was sold by Christie's for $ 9M in the same sale of the Gaffé collection, lot 16.
He develops the symbol of the man-tree, which is a link between ground and sky. The roots are replaced by bare legs below a stretched male sex. The arms are made of small side branches. The top of the figure is a mix between head and sun, with a single eye and cat whiskers. Le Piège, painted in Miro's Montroig Catalan home farm during the summer of 1924, is a demonstrator of the new style.
The work is preceded by a preparatory drawing which facilitates its deciphering. The trap on the beach is a kind of lobster rack in the shape of a female sex. It is beyond the reach of the sperm stream but awaits the rabbit and the hen which are walking in the foreground like innocent victims.
Breton is delighted. He immediately acquires the painting that he would keep throughout his life. This 92 x 73 cm oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas was sold for £ 5.3M by Christie's on March 23, 2021, lot 115.
The surrealist influence on Miro faded in the following year with the first abstract works, sometimes overwritten with a short poem. As early as 1926, a work by Miro and Ernst for the Ballets Russes was considered a bourgeois drift by the surrealists and their communist friends. Miro will keep his creative autonomy intact.
from Surrealist Eroticism to Peinture-Poème
Joan Miró’s evolution in the mid-1920s marks a pivotal shift from detailed, observational realism toward the fluid, subconscious-driven language of Surrealism, blending eroticism, symbolism, and poetic integration. This period, especially 1924–1927 while he was in Paris on Rue Blomet among Surrealist poets and artists like André Masson and Max Ernst, saw him develop his peinture-poème ("painting-poem") style—works that merge visual signs with handwritten text, automatism, and dream-like imagery.
Early Surrealist Eroticism: Portrait de Madame K. (1924)
Painted in spring 1924 in Paris (oil, charcoal, and colored wax crayons on canvas, approx. 116.7 × 90.7 cm), Portrait de Madame K. exemplifies Miró’s radical break from his earlier meticulous realism (e.g., The Farm, 1921–22). It belongs to a small series of mostly grisaille (near-monochrome) works with a gridded, geometric structure—prominent set squares and lines—that organizes the canvas like a schematic or ritual diagram. The subject (likely Polish artist Dora Bianka, or "Mlle. K." in studies) is dissected into symbolic, erotic fragments rather than a cohesive figure:
Transition to Peinture-Poème: Le corps de ma brune (1925)
By 1925, Miró fully embraced peinture-poésie, a series (roughly 1924–1927) combining enigmatic biomorphic symbols with handwritten poetic text, often drawn from folk songs, dreams, or automatic writing. This marks the evolution from the more analytical, erotic dissection in Portrait de Madame K. toward a lyrical, integrated fusion of word and image—painting as poetry, where text becomes a visual and symbolic element. Painting-Poem ("Le corps de ma brune puisque je l’aime comme ma chatte habillée en vert salade comme de la grêle c’est pareil") (oil on canvas, 1925, approx. 130 × 96.5 cm) is a prime example. The entire surface incorporates the handwritten lyrics of a popular French folk song evoking erotic whimsy and affection for "my brunette," with playful, surreal comparisons (e.g., likening love to a cat dressed in salad green or hail). Visually, it features:
Overall Evolution
Early Surrealist Eroticism: Portrait de Madame K. (1924)
Painted in spring 1924 in Paris (oil, charcoal, and colored wax crayons on canvas, approx. 116.7 × 90.7 cm), Portrait de Madame K. exemplifies Miró’s radical break from his earlier meticulous realism (e.g., The Farm, 1921–22). It belongs to a small series of mostly grisaille (near-monochrome) works with a gridded, geometric structure—prominent set squares and lines—that organizes the canvas like a schematic or ritual diagram. The subject (likely Polish artist Dora Bianka, or "Mlle. K." in studies) is dissected into symbolic, erotic fragments rather than a cohesive figure:
- Two strong black vertical lines form the body.
- Breasts appear asymmetrically—one realistically rendered, the other as a simple circle—linked by a horizontal line.
- A floating heart (with flames?) sits centrally.
- The head is a large black hat-like shape with snake-like tendrils.
- The sex is a triangle with realistic hairs "engulfed by flames."
Transition to Peinture-Poème: Le corps de ma brune (1925)
By 1925, Miró fully embraced peinture-poésie, a series (roughly 1924–1927) combining enigmatic biomorphic symbols with handwritten poetic text, often drawn from folk songs, dreams, or automatic writing. This marks the evolution from the more analytical, erotic dissection in Portrait de Madame K. toward a lyrical, integrated fusion of word and image—painting as poetry, where text becomes a visual and symbolic element. Painting-Poem ("Le corps de ma brune puisque je l’aime comme ma chatte habillée en vert salade comme de la grêle c’est pareil") (oil on canvas, 1925, approx. 130 × 96.5 cm) is a prime example. The entire surface incorporates the handwritten lyrics of a popular French folk song evoking erotic whimsy and affection for "my brunette," with playful, surreal comparisons (e.g., likening love to a cat dressed in salad green or hail). Visually, it features:
- A mottled brown ground.
- Abstract, biomorphic forms and signs floating across the canvas.
- The long poetic inscription dominating as both text and image.
Overall Evolution
- **1924 (Portrait de Madame K.)**: Focused on deconstruction, geometric ritual, and raw surrealist eroticism—fragmented female body as symbolic map of desire amid a gridded, anti-pictorial space.
- 1925 onward (Le corps de ma brune): Synthesis into peinture-poème, where erotic themes flow into dream-like, textual compositions. Words gain equal status with images, enabling freer lyricism, automatism, and childlike symbolism.
- This trajectory reflects Miró’s broader "anti-painting" stance (later intensifying in the late 1920s), his immersion in Surrealist circles, and his Catalan roots blended with Parisian experimentation. It laid groundwork for his later colorful, cosmic abstractions while preserving the poetic core.
1925 Le Corps de ma Brune
2012 SOLD for £ 17M by Christie's
Surrealism is the expression of the subconscious. André Breton explains the new literary theories. In 1924 Joan Miro is one of the signatories of the Manifeste du Surréalisme.
Indeed, the artist has lost interest in realism and is exploring the dream and the subconscious. His abstraction is nevertheless inspired by his hallucinations caused by poor life conditions including hunger.
Miro's approach is deeply original and will be recognized as such by Picasso. He is the first surrealist to transcend the boundaries between poetry and painting. He receives the highest possible compliment of the demanding André Breton : "Miro is the most surrealist of ourselves."
Miro has his studio on rue Blomet, next to André Masson's. A sort of cenacle of young poets is formed, including Aragon, Eluard, Desnos, Leiris, Queneau.
Miro knew how to stage colorful symbols in a landscape environment. The influence of his new friends leads him to dreamlike abstraction. The colors he distributes on his canvases are the mirror of his subconscious. In 1925 he reflects his great personal concern of that time, the erotic inspired search for a woman.
The public loves these warm colors interspersed with biomorphic details that are not identifiable. He would later say that he was more inspired by poets than by painters. His abstraction completely escapes the geometries of Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian. His art is Peinture, and he often uses this French title.
Peinture, oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm painted in 1925, was sold for £ 10.2M by Christie's on March 23, 2021, lot 106. The space is filled with undulating abstract lines of great thinness, prefiguring his crypto-figurations which will culminate in 1927 with the blue period and in 1940 with the Constellations series.
The literary and artistic expression must be free from conventions, but not indispensably spontaneous. The words of the poem escape without building a usual phrase. The language of the image, close to abstraction, invites for multiple interpretations. Later when the letters will disappear from the field, the title will provide the link between the image and its multiple interpretations.
If the poem deals with the female body, for example, the observer led on by the erotic force of the words will look for some marks, and find and lose. Those two spots of color : are they the breasts or are they the eyes ?
On February 7, 2012, Christie's sold for £ 17M from a lower estimate of £ 6M "le corps de ma brune". So amazing for its time, this oil on canvas made in 1925, 130 x 96 cm, is superimposing text and colors. The layout of the words is free, like in a poem by Apollinaire.
Grok thought :
Quote
Marie Ruiz-Vidal @RuizVidal7 Sep 2
Joan Miró Peinture-Poème, Le corps de ma brune, 1925
Indeed, the artist has lost interest in realism and is exploring the dream and the subconscious. His abstraction is nevertheless inspired by his hallucinations caused by poor life conditions including hunger.
Miro's approach is deeply original and will be recognized as such by Picasso. He is the first surrealist to transcend the boundaries between poetry and painting. He receives the highest possible compliment of the demanding André Breton : "Miro is the most surrealist of ourselves."
Miro has his studio on rue Blomet, next to André Masson's. A sort of cenacle of young poets is formed, including Aragon, Eluard, Desnos, Leiris, Queneau.
Miro knew how to stage colorful symbols in a landscape environment. The influence of his new friends leads him to dreamlike abstraction. The colors he distributes on his canvases are the mirror of his subconscious. In 1925 he reflects his great personal concern of that time, the erotic inspired search for a woman.
The public loves these warm colors interspersed with biomorphic details that are not identifiable. He would later say that he was more inspired by poets than by painters. His abstraction completely escapes the geometries of Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian. His art is Peinture, and he often uses this French title.
Peinture, oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm painted in 1925, was sold for £ 10.2M by Christie's on March 23, 2021, lot 106. The space is filled with undulating abstract lines of great thinness, prefiguring his crypto-figurations which will culminate in 1927 with the blue period and in 1940 with the Constellations series.
The literary and artistic expression must be free from conventions, but not indispensably spontaneous. The words of the poem escape without building a usual phrase. The language of the image, close to abstraction, invites for multiple interpretations. Later when the letters will disappear from the field, the title will provide the link between the image and its multiple interpretations.
If the poem deals with the female body, for example, the observer led on by the erotic force of the words will look for some marks, and find and lose. Those two spots of color : are they the breasts or are they the eyes ?
On February 7, 2012, Christie's sold for £ 17M from a lower estimate of £ 6M "le corps de ma brune". So amazing for its time, this oil on canvas made in 1925, 130 x 96 cm, is superimposing text and colors. The layout of the words is free, like in a poem by Apollinaire.
Grok thought :
Quote
Marie Ruiz-Vidal @RuizVidal7 Sep 2
Joan Miró Peinture-Poème, Le corps de ma brune, 1925
- The post shares Joan Miró's 1925 "Peinture-Poème: Le corps de ma brune," a Surrealist hybrid of abstract ink, watercolor, and handwritten French folk song lyrics evoking erotic whimsy on a mottled brown ground.
- The poem's text—"le corps de ma brune puisque je l'aime comme ma chatte habillée en vert salade comme de la grêle c'est pareil"—translates to "the body of my brunette since I love her like my cat dressed in green salad like hail it's the same," merging bodily desire with absurd humor.
- As part of Miró's early 1920s experiments in automatic creation, the work reflects Surrealist principles of subconscious expression, fitting poster Marie Ruiz-Vidal's curation of minimalist, poetic art alongside filmic tributes.
René Magritte and Joan Miró, both pivotal figures in Surrealism, explored the tensions between words and images in strikingly different ways, reflecting their distinct approaches to the movement. Magritte's treatment is conceptual, analytical, and often confrontational, using text to expose the arbitrary and deceptive nature of representation. Miró's is more poetic, intuitive, and integrative, treating words as elements within a lyrical, symbolic visual language.
Magritte's Word-Image Tensions
Magritte's work systematically interrogates semiotics—the study of signs—challenging the assumed equivalence between objects, images, and words. His most famous example is The Treachery of Images (1929), featuring a realistic pipe captioned "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"). The painting denies its own mimetic power: the image is not the object, nor is the word the image or object. This creates deliberate paradox and betrayal ("treachery") of conventional signification.
This theme recurs in his 1929 article "Les Mots et Les Images" (Words and Images), published in La Révolution surréaliste, where he presented panels dissecting mismatches: an object labeled with an unrelated word (e.g., in La Clef des Songes / The Key of Dreams, 1930, where a shoe is labeled "la lune" / the moon), or images replacing words in absurd ways. Magritte's style is precise and illusionistic—everyday objects rendered clearly—to heighten the intellectual jolt. The tension arises from contradiction and denial: words and images collide to reveal that neither fully captures reality. Influenced by Belgian Surrealism (Nougé's ideas on arbitrary signs), his approach is rational and philosophical, forcing viewers to question perception, language, and illusion.
Miró's Word-Image Tensions
Miró incorporated text more fluidly and playfully, often as part of his invented pictorial language during his "peinture-poésie" (painting-poetry) phase (1924–1927). Words function as poetic or symbolic elements within abstract, biomorphic compositions rather than tools of critique.
A prime example is Photo: This Is the Color of My Dreams (1925), where the phrase "ceci est la couleur de mes rêves" ("this is the color of my dreams") appears alongside a blue patch and surreal forms—blending text with color and shape to evoke dreamlike lyricism. In other works like his Constellations series or poem-paintings, inscriptions, letters, or fragments integrate into swirling, automatic compositions inspired by psychic automatism (Breton's emphasis on the unconscious).
Miró's tension is subtler: words are not used to contradict or expose deception but to complement and expand the visual poetry. He aimed to create a new symbolic language—biomorphic shapes, stars, eyes, and glyphs—where text adds rhythm or emotional resonance, like notes in music or words in verse. As Miró said, he applied "colours like words that shape poems." His approach is intuitive and automatist, drawing from literary influences (e.g., collaborating on illustrated poems), resulting in harmonious yet enigmatic fusions rather than stark oppositions.
Key Comparisons
Magritte's Word-Image Tensions
Magritte's work systematically interrogates semiotics—the study of signs—challenging the assumed equivalence between objects, images, and words. His most famous example is The Treachery of Images (1929), featuring a realistic pipe captioned "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"). The painting denies its own mimetic power: the image is not the object, nor is the word the image or object. This creates deliberate paradox and betrayal ("treachery") of conventional signification.
This theme recurs in his 1929 article "Les Mots et Les Images" (Words and Images), published in La Révolution surréaliste, where he presented panels dissecting mismatches: an object labeled with an unrelated word (e.g., in La Clef des Songes / The Key of Dreams, 1930, where a shoe is labeled "la lune" / the moon), or images replacing words in absurd ways. Magritte's style is precise and illusionistic—everyday objects rendered clearly—to heighten the intellectual jolt. The tension arises from contradiction and denial: words and images collide to reveal that neither fully captures reality. Influenced by Belgian Surrealism (Nougé's ideas on arbitrary signs), his approach is rational and philosophical, forcing viewers to question perception, language, and illusion.
Miró's Word-Image Tensions
Miró incorporated text more fluidly and playfully, often as part of his invented pictorial language during his "peinture-poésie" (painting-poetry) phase (1924–1927). Words function as poetic or symbolic elements within abstract, biomorphic compositions rather than tools of critique.
A prime example is Photo: This Is the Color of My Dreams (1925), where the phrase "ceci est la couleur de mes rêves" ("this is the color of my dreams") appears alongside a blue patch and surreal forms—blending text with color and shape to evoke dreamlike lyricism. In other works like his Constellations series or poem-paintings, inscriptions, letters, or fragments integrate into swirling, automatic compositions inspired by psychic automatism (Breton's emphasis on the unconscious).
Miró's tension is subtler: words are not used to contradict or expose deception but to complement and expand the visual poetry. He aimed to create a new symbolic language—biomorphic shapes, stars, eyes, and glyphs—where text adds rhythm or emotional resonance, like notes in music or words in verse. As Miró said, he applied "colours like words that shape poems." His approach is intuitive and automatist, drawing from literary influences (e.g., collaborating on illustrated poems), resulting in harmonious yet enigmatic fusions rather than stark oppositions.
Key Comparisons
- Purpose: Magritte uses word-image tensions to deconstruct and reveal illusions (e.g., the sign is arbitrary; images betray reality). Miró uses them to construct a personal, poetic universe (e.g., text enhances the dreamlike flow).
- Style and Technique: Magritte's is veristic and deadpan—clear, recognizable objects with inserted text for maximum paradox. Miró's is abstract and gestural—biomorphic forms, automatic drawing, with words as organic parts of the composition.
- Philosophical Tone: Magritte's is skeptical and analytical (echoing semiotics; later influencing Foucault's This Is Not a Pipe). Miró's is celebratory and lyrical (closer to automatism and visual metaphor).
- Shared Surrealist Context: Both drew from Surrealism's interest in the unconscious and language's limits, but Magritte (via Belgian rationalism) leaned conceptual, while Miró (early influence on the movement) leaned toward creating new visual "poetry."
1927 Etoile Bleue
2012 SOLD for £ 23.5M by Sotheby's
Miro was the most abstract of the surrealists and the most surreal of the abstract. His use of geometric shapes is as hermetic as the artistic grammar of Kandinsky. The title of the work invites the viewer to a certain vision that is never the only possible interpretation.
Painted in 1927, Peinture (étoile bleue), is typical and can rightly be considered as an outstanding work of the artist. It was sold for € 11.6M by Aguttes on December 21, 2007 and for £ 23.5M by Sotheby's on June 19, 2012, lot 10.
Never a visible star was blue, but the universe of Miro is completely dreamlike. The artwork, an oil on canvas 115 x 89 cm, is actually azure dark blue, anticipating over thirty years Klein's IKB.
The vertical format invites to gravity, but the opposite occurs. The forms that sail in this space are completely free and far between, like galaxies in the sky.
Grok thought :
Quote
Temetrius @Twelveskii Dec 29, 2023
Ili Etoile Bleue,Joan Miro, prodato za 37 miliona dolara
Painted in 1927, Peinture (étoile bleue), is typical and can rightly be considered as an outstanding work of the artist. It was sold for € 11.6M by Aguttes on December 21, 2007 and for £ 23.5M by Sotheby's on June 19, 2012, lot 10.
Never a visible star was blue, but the universe of Miro is completely dreamlike. The artwork, an oil on canvas 115 x 89 cm, is actually azure dark blue, anticipating over thirty years Klein's IKB.
The vertical format invites to gravity, but the opposite occurs. The forms that sail in this space are completely free and far between, like galaxies in the sky.
Grok thought :
Quote
Temetrius @Twelveskii Dec 29, 2023
Ili Etoile Bleue,Joan Miro, prodato za 37 miliona dolara
- This reply by @Twelveskii jokingly equates a botched ink scribble on a couch to Joan Miró's 1927 surrealist masterpiece "L'Etoile Bleue," which sold for $37.2 million at Sotheby's in 2012, turning domestic mishap into high-art satire.
- The thread originates from a user's frustrated post about permanent pen marks on beige upholstery, with abstract lines evoking modernist doodles that resist cleaning.
- Miró's painting features ethereal blue motifs like a bird and ladder on a vast blue canvas, a surreal contrast to the post's chaotic stains, underscoring how chance marks parallel avant-garde abstraction in art history.
Special Report
Symbol of the Stars
Stars are one of Joan Miró’s most enduring and versatile symbols, representing the celestial realm, dreams, the subconscious, poetry, and the infinite poetic universe that contrasts with earthly, grounded elements like women or feet. They embody the artist’s lifelong fascination with the cosmos, automatism, and the fusion of reality with the imaginary.
Core Symbolism
Morning Star (from the Constellations series, 1940) — a prime example of starry, interconnected dreamlike forms.
Post-WWII and mature work (1950s–1970s): Stars become bolder and more integrated into large-scale compositions, sculptures, and ceramics. They appear in titles and motifs like Woman, Bird, Star (homage to Picasso, 1966–73), where the star floats as a poetic counterpoint to the central woman and bird. Public sculptures such as The Sun, the Moon and One Star (Chicago, 1981) extend this cosmic symbolism into monumental form.
Woman and Birds (Constellations, 1940) — dense with stars and celestial signs.
Nightingale’s Song at Midnight and Morning Rain (Constellations, 1940) — stars punctuate the nocturnal, musical composition.Visual Characteristics
Core Symbolism
- Dreams and the subconscious: Stars (along with moons and planets) pull the viewer into the dream world, opposing earthly anchors like feet or the female form (linked to fertility and reality). Miró’s art often balances earth (grounded reality) and sky (dreams and aspiration).
- Poetic universe and escape: Stars, birds, and women form a core triad in his mature vocabulary. Stars and birds symbolize spiritual/poetic elevation and freedom, while women root the composition in the earthly. This creates a cosmogonic vision of harmony between terrestrial and celestial worlds.
- Childlike wonder and universality: Miró’s stars are often simple, schematic forms—frequently a six-pointed star made with three crossing lines (like a childish doodle). They feel timeless and universal, evoking primitive art, cave drawings, and constellations. More elaborate versions can become anthropomorphic “characters” with hair or hybrid features.
Morning Star (from the Constellations series, 1940) — a prime example of starry, interconnected dreamlike forms.
Post-WWII and mature work (1950s–1970s): Stars become bolder and more integrated into large-scale compositions, sculptures, and ceramics. They appear in titles and motifs like Woman, Bird, Star (homage to Picasso, 1966–73), where the star floats as a poetic counterpoint to the central woman and bird. Public sculptures such as The Sun, the Moon and One Star (Chicago, 1981) extend this cosmic symbolism into monumental form.
Woman and Birds (Constellations, 1940) — dense with stars and celestial signs.
Nightingale’s Song at Midnight and Morning Rain (Constellations, 1940) — stars punctuate the nocturnal, musical composition.Visual Characteristics
- Simple linear stars: Three lines crossing at a center, often black or colored, scattered like constellations.
- Shooting stars or elaborated forms: Sometimes with trails, dots, or integrated into figures.
- Color and context: Bright primaries (red, blue, yellow) on flat or textured grounds; they float freely, suggesting movement and infinity.
1927 Femme au Chapeau Rouge
2020 SOLD for £ 22.3M by Sotheby's
When Breton is preparing the Manifeste du Surréalisme in 1924, this movement is mainly literary. It is Miro who will make the link between art and poetry, with his cycle of dream paintings. The exuberant titles give way to a minimalist description : "Peinture", sometimes followed by a subtitle.
This phase culminates in 1927 with the blue period. The background is an opaque sky blue, azul in Spanish. This too saturated but very bright color had traditionally discouraged artists but could evoke a spirituality. It will inspire Klein's transcendental IKB.
The artist's graphic technique is unprecedented. The image approaches a very schematic reality, by the spots of vivid colors that dot its surface. The dream is a very narrow black line which complements the previous forms and often contradicts them. He will reuse this opposition with high virtuosity in his war series of the Constellations.
This graphic duality is present in Peinture (Etoile bleue), which derives its subtitle from a cobalt blue star. The figuration is a tiny tightrope walker in a spinning movement. This oil on canvas 115 x 89 cm was sold for £ 23.5M by Sotheby's in 2012.
On July 28, 2020, Sotheby's sold for £ 22.3M Peinture (Femme au chapeau rouge), oil on canvas 130 x 97 cm, lot 17. This work attests to the influence of Miro on Calder who managed to acquire it in 1966. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Invited by the subtitle, the observer quickly finds the spot that represents the hat. The image of the woman is gradually created from top to bottom, with the golden neckline, the black corset and the large white apron that flies in the wind. The black line could have underlined the torso if it did not protrude above the hat. In the lower part of the image, it forms a sort of crinoline on the left of the apron.
This phase culminates in 1927 with the blue period. The background is an opaque sky blue, azul in Spanish. This too saturated but very bright color had traditionally discouraged artists but could evoke a spirituality. It will inspire Klein's transcendental IKB.
The artist's graphic technique is unprecedented. The image approaches a very schematic reality, by the spots of vivid colors that dot its surface. The dream is a very narrow black line which complements the previous forms and often contradicts them. He will reuse this opposition with high virtuosity in his war series of the Constellations.
This graphic duality is present in Peinture (Etoile bleue), which derives its subtitle from a cobalt blue star. The figuration is a tiny tightrope walker in a spinning movement. This oil on canvas 115 x 89 cm was sold for £ 23.5M by Sotheby's in 2012.
On July 28, 2020, Sotheby's sold for £ 22.3M Peinture (Femme au chapeau rouge), oil on canvas 130 x 97 cm, lot 17. This work attests to the influence of Miro on Calder who managed to acquire it in 1966. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Invited by the subtitle, the observer quickly finds the spot that represents the hat. The image of the woman is gradually created from top to bottom, with the golden neckline, the black corset and the large white apron that flies in the wind. The black line could have underlined the torso if it did not protrude above the hat. In the lower part of the image, it forms a sort of crinoline on the left of the apron.
1933 Peinture
2017 SOLD for $ 23.4M by Christie's
Since his surrealist period Joan Miro knows that painting is no more than colors on a support. He begins to name his own paintings with their elementary description : "Peinture", sometimes with a subtitle. His desire is poetic. In 1927 he is very close to abstraction with pictures of a nocturnal atmosphere where hardly perceptible spots and lines coexist.
For the surrealists this trend is an inadmissible drift. Miro does not agree with the communist affiliations of the group. The break is snarling. When Miro announced to Tériade in 1930 that he wanted to assassinate the painting, it meant that he desired to define a new art, alone, without the influence of any past or present school.
For the next two years he tries collages that do not satisfy him. In early 1933 in his mother's apartment in Barcelona, he defines a two-step process for a homogeneous series of 18 artworks. He prepares 18 maquettes by gluing folded or crumpled papers. Each oil on canvas will be inspired by one of these models without being a copy. The title "Peinture" is reused for this series.
This post-Dadaist process may seem complex compared to direct painting. Miro knows that his imagination is unlimited. He probably wanted to bring a guide for avoiding any figuration. He expresses his subconscious by a composition similar to the 1927 Peintures except that the spots inspired by the collages are brightly colored, appearing as abstract objects floating ahead of the night.
A Peinture, oil on canvas 130 x 162 cm from the 1933 series, was sold for $ 23.4M from a lower estimate of $ 18M by Christie's on November 13, 2017, lot 31 A. Another example, 146 x 115 cm was sold for $ 11M by Christie's on May 8, 2013.
The Constellations painted in response to the outbreak of World War II are similar in design to the Peintures of 1927 and 1933. The dream of the starry night is now confessed by the artist and the mythical theme of the constellation brings some figuration.
For the surrealists this trend is an inadmissible drift. Miro does not agree with the communist affiliations of the group. The break is snarling. When Miro announced to Tériade in 1930 that he wanted to assassinate the painting, it meant that he desired to define a new art, alone, without the influence of any past or present school.
For the next two years he tries collages that do not satisfy him. In early 1933 in his mother's apartment in Barcelona, he defines a two-step process for a homogeneous series of 18 artworks. He prepares 18 maquettes by gluing folded or crumpled papers. Each oil on canvas will be inspired by one of these models without being a copy. The title "Peinture" is reused for this series.
This post-Dadaist process may seem complex compared to direct painting. Miro knows that his imagination is unlimited. He probably wanted to bring a guide for avoiding any figuration. He expresses his subconscious by a composition similar to the 1927 Peintures except that the spots inspired by the collages are brightly colored, appearing as abstract objects floating ahead of the night.
A Peinture, oil on canvas 130 x 162 cm from the 1933 series, was sold for $ 23.4M from a lower estimate of $ 18M by Christie's on November 13, 2017, lot 31 A. Another example, 146 x 115 cm was sold for $ 11M by Christie's on May 8, 2013.
The Constellations painted in response to the outbreak of World War II are similar in design to the Peintures of 1927 and 1933. The dream of the starry night is now confessed by the artist and the mythical theme of the constellation brings some figuration.
1940 Constellations
Joan Miró’s Constellations series (23 gouaches on paper, created January 1940–September 1941) is one of the most profound artistic responses to the chaos of World War II. Produced in exile amid personal and global upheaval, these small but densely poetic works served as a luminous refuge and act of defiant creativity.
Historical and Personal Context
These works were Miró’s “refuge during the war,” as he later described. He sought escape through “night, music, and the stars,” channeling automatism, poetry, and cosmic imagery into intricate networks of signs—stars, moons, birds, eyes, and biomorphic forms—against textured, atmospheric grounds.
Morning Star (1940, Varengeville) — a quintessential example of celestial escape amid turmoil.
Nightingale’s Song at Midnight and Morning Rain (1940, Palma) — blending music, night, and renewal.
Nocturne (1940) — evoking starry, dreamlike intensity.Artistic and Symbolic Response to War
Unable to show the works safely in occupied Europe or Franco’s Spain, Miró had them smuggled to the U.S. via his dealer Pierre Matisse. They premiered in New York in 1945, offering hope and proof of artistic survival to exiled intellectuals. The full series was reunited at MoMA in 1993.
The Constellations stand as a testament to art’s power as spiritual resistance: small in scale yet vast in imagination, born from blackout nights and wartime flight, yet radiating cosmic harmony and freedom. They mark a high point in Miró’s career, consolidating his visual poetry while transcending the era’s darkness.
Historical and Personal Context
- Background of displacement: After the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Miró had already experienced political turmoil in his homeland. With the outbreak of WWII in September 1939, he and his family (wife Pilar and daughter Dolors) sought safety in Varengeville-sur-Mer, a quiet coastal village in Normandy, France. There, among artists like Georges Braque, he found temporary seclusion in a rural setting.
- Flight from invasion: In May–June 1940, as Nazi forces advanced and bombed Normandy, the family fled hastily. Miró carried a roll of the early Constellations and blank sheets. They traveled through Paris and Perpignan before returning to Spain—first Palma de Mallorca (with Pilar’s family), then Mont-roig del Camp. This journey involved anxiety, blackouts, and uncertainty under Franco’s regime.
- Creation across locations:
- Early works (first ~10) in Varengeville (Jan–May 1940).
- Continued in Palma de Mallorca (from August/September 1940).
- Final pieces in Mont-roig (summer 1941).
These works were Miró’s “refuge during the war,” as he later described. He sought escape through “night, music, and the stars,” channeling automatism, poetry, and cosmic imagery into intricate networks of signs—stars, moons, birds, eyes, and biomorphic forms—against textured, atmospheric grounds.
Morning Star (1940, Varengeville) — a quintessential example of celestial escape amid turmoil.
Nightingale’s Song at Midnight and Morning Rain (1940, Palma) — blending music, night, and renewal.
Nocturne (1940) — evoking starry, dreamlike intensity.Artistic and Symbolic Response to War
- Defiance through poetry: The series counters violence with joy, delicacy, and interconnectedness. Dense “all-over” compositions prefigure Abstract Expressionism (influencing Pollock) while remaining rooted in Surrealist automatism and Miró’s personal sign language.
- Poetic titles: Each work has a lyrical, often extended title (e.g., The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers), functining as peinture-poème. They evoke music, nature, and love rather than horror.o
- André Breton’s view: The Surrealist leader called the series “the note of wild defiance of the hunter expressed by the grouse’s love song”—a metaphor for resilient, hidden beauty amid danger. Breton later paired them with his own poems in a 1959 book.
Unable to show the works safely in occupied Europe or Franco’s Spain, Miró had them smuggled to the U.S. via his dealer Pierre Matisse. They premiered in New York in 1945, offering hope and proof of artistic survival to exiled intellectuals. The full series was reunited at MoMA in 1993.
The Constellations stand as a testament to art’s power as spiritual resistance: small in scale yet vast in imagination, born from blackout nights and wartime flight, yet radiating cosmic harmony and freedom. They mark a high point in Miró’s career, consolidating his visual poetry while transcending the era’s darkness.
Femme et Oiseaux
2017 SOLD for £ 24.5M by Sotheby's
Miró's Constellations consist of exactly 23 small gouache, oil wash, tempera, and charcoal works on paper (each around 15 × 18 inches), begun in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy (France), in January 1940 and completed in Mont-roig del Camp (Catalonia, Spain) by September 1941. Amid the chaos of the Spanish Civil War's aftermath and the Nazi invasion of France, Miró retreated inward, drawing inspiration from the night sky, stars, music, and nature as a form of resistance and hope. He sanded the paper surfaces, blended incompatible media for cloudy, ethereal backgrounds (often midnight blues, rosy dawns, or luminous fields), and overlaid intricate networks of biomorphic shapes—crescents, eyes, stars, hourglasses, triangles, birds, lovers, and abstract symbols—connected by thin black lines like a celestial map or wrought-iron screen. The result is a poetic, dreamlike cosmos: static yet vibrating with implied rhythm, filled with joy, love, and escape despite the era's darkness. These are considered among Miró's most concentrated and brilliant achievements, evoking a "cosmic symphony" or inner universe.
Joan Miro did not want to engage in politics but the tragic events forced his hand. His participation in the pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the 1937 Paris Exhibition did not go unnoticed. He feared retaliation and moved to Varengeville-sur-Mer in 1939.
Varengeville is one of the prettiest villages on the Normandy coast. Braque has his workshop and spends summers there. Calder is a frequent visitor. In this small land's end Miro calms his anxieties by contemplating the immensity of the night sky.
The personalization of the groupings of stars is one of the oldest poetic themes of our civilizations. Miro is not an astrologer but he is a poet. With the exceptional freedom of his imagination he superimposes on the sky the images of his fantasy.
In January 1940 Miro begins a series of artworks on the theme of the Constellations. They will all be on paper in the same size, 38 x 46 cm. The background is prepared by splashes of gouache and oil paint, more or less dark. The crescent moon and a few stars are the spectacular elements in bright colors accompanied by floating symbolic or abstract forms. The constellation, woman or bird, is a figure in thin lines surrounded by scrolls, scarcely more visible than a watermark.
The artist conceived from the outset this series as a coherent whole. The use of a a small and light format was premonitory. When he fled France to return to Spain in May 1940 he could take in his luggage the entire set : ten finished works and the pieces of paper that he will be use for the thirteen subsequent works.
The series of Constellations was completed in September 1941. Miro kept the secret until an exhibition in New York in 1945. Pollock was convinced by a possible non-figurative artistic transposition of an observable reality. With the Constellations of Miro modern art has just crossed the Atlantic.
The eighth opus of Miro's Constellations is dated 13 April 1940. Its unusually simple title, Femme et Oiseaux, prefigures the favorite themes of the artist for the rest of his career. In this sky that calls for peace, Joan Miro is not calmed : the woman howls. It was sold for £ 24.5M by Sotheby's on June 21, 2017, lot 45. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Jun 21, 2017
#AuctionUpdate Mesmerising painting from #Miró’s legendary Constellation series, Femme et oiseaux sells for £24.57m / $30.98m
Joan Miro did not want to engage in politics but the tragic events forced his hand. His participation in the pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the 1937 Paris Exhibition did not go unnoticed. He feared retaliation and moved to Varengeville-sur-Mer in 1939.
Varengeville is one of the prettiest villages on the Normandy coast. Braque has his workshop and spends summers there. Calder is a frequent visitor. In this small land's end Miro calms his anxieties by contemplating the immensity of the night sky.
The personalization of the groupings of stars is one of the oldest poetic themes of our civilizations. Miro is not an astrologer but he is a poet. With the exceptional freedom of his imagination he superimposes on the sky the images of his fantasy.
In January 1940 Miro begins a series of artworks on the theme of the Constellations. They will all be on paper in the same size, 38 x 46 cm. The background is prepared by splashes of gouache and oil paint, more or less dark. The crescent moon and a few stars are the spectacular elements in bright colors accompanied by floating symbolic or abstract forms. The constellation, woman or bird, is a figure in thin lines surrounded by scrolls, scarcely more visible than a watermark.
The artist conceived from the outset this series as a coherent whole. The use of a a small and light format was premonitory. When he fled France to return to Spain in May 1940 he could take in his luggage the entire set : ten finished works and the pieces of paper that he will be use for the thirteen subsequent works.
The series of Constellations was completed in September 1941. Miro kept the secret until an exhibition in New York in 1945. Pollock was convinced by a possible non-figurative artistic transposition of an observable reality. With the Constellations of Miro modern art has just crossed the Atlantic.
The eighth opus of Miro's Constellations is dated 13 April 1940. Its unusually simple title, Femme et Oiseaux, prefigures the favorite themes of the artist for the rest of his career. In this sky that calls for peace, Joan Miro is not calmed : the woman howls. It was sold for £ 24.5M by Sotheby's on June 21, 2017, lot 45. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Grok thought :
Quote
Sotheby's @Sothebys Jun 21, 2017
#AuctionUpdate Mesmerising painting from #Miró’s legendary Constellation series, Femme et oiseaux sells for £24.57m / $30.98m
- This 2017 Sotheby's post announces the £24.57 million sale of Joan Miró's "Femme et oiseaux," an abstract gouache from his iconic Constellations series, capturing ethereal figures and birds amid wartime exile in Normandy.
- Created in 1941 as the eighth of 23 intimate works on paper, the series reflects Miró's Surrealist symbolism of hope and renewal during World War II, with each piece measuring roughly 38x46 cm for portability and intimacy.
- The auction price, surpassing $30 million, marked a high for Miró's Constellations at the time, driven by its pristine provenance from the artist's estate and global collector interest in modernist masterpieces.
March 22, 1945 Femme dans la Nuit
2018 SOLD for $ 22.6M by Phillips
The war in Europe and the political situation in Spain deeply disturbed Joan Miro. Escaping in the contemplation of the stars, he had made his 1940 Constellations series and had hidden them. He then devotes his creativity to the entanglement of three themes : woman, star, bird.
In July 1944 Miro managed to send the Constellations to the United States. Pierre Matisse bought the series which he exhibited in his gallery in New York in January 1945. At that time it becomes legitimate to imagine that the end of the horrors is coming. In his studio in Barcelona, Miro accompanies this hope by a chronicle of oils on canvas, a technique that he had not used during the darkest hours.
The first installment of this series is dated January 26 and titled Femme et Oiseau dans la Nuit. The outlines of the woman are painted in thin black lines, much easier to read over the bright white background than the extraterrestrial characters of the 1940 Constellations. The eyes and the sex form colorful figures inside this body.
This dreamlike image is neither realistic nor cubist. The position of the eyes in the circle of the head responds only to a geometric balance. The composition is completed by musical notes and by stars.
As expected, the situation is improving. On February 1 with a Femme rêvant de l'Evasion (woman dreaming of escape), the wicked birds have already disappeared. This oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm was sold for £ 8.4M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2013, lot 26.
The main figure is human, but done in fine lines and patches of color. The symbolic star is present, but clearly apart from the four sensory phylacteries that materialize the dream. The forms that appear at the top of the image and inside the face look like musical notes. The scale of evasion is included or not, it is up to you to decide.
That naive drawing on a light background is remarkably modern for its time, indeed preceding the research by Dubuffet and Chaissac on Art Brut.
On November 15, 2018, Phillips sold for $ 22.6M from a lower estimate of $ 12M a Femme dans la Nuit dated March 22, oil on canvas 130 x 163 cm, lot 4. Please watch the video prepared by the auction house.
Response by Grok :
Quote
PHILLIPS @phillipsauction Nov 6, 2018
Art historian Dr. Charles Stuckey discusses the importance of "Femme dans la nuit," —a featured highlight from our upcoming 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York: https://phll.ps/2yTze4B
In July 1944 Miro managed to send the Constellations to the United States. Pierre Matisse bought the series which he exhibited in his gallery in New York in January 1945. At that time it becomes legitimate to imagine that the end of the horrors is coming. In his studio in Barcelona, Miro accompanies this hope by a chronicle of oils on canvas, a technique that he had not used during the darkest hours.
The first installment of this series is dated January 26 and titled Femme et Oiseau dans la Nuit. The outlines of the woman are painted in thin black lines, much easier to read over the bright white background than the extraterrestrial characters of the 1940 Constellations. The eyes and the sex form colorful figures inside this body.
This dreamlike image is neither realistic nor cubist. The position of the eyes in the circle of the head responds only to a geometric balance. The composition is completed by musical notes and by stars.
As expected, the situation is improving. On February 1 with a Femme rêvant de l'Evasion (woman dreaming of escape), the wicked birds have already disappeared. This oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm was sold for £ 8.4M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2013, lot 26.
The main figure is human, but done in fine lines and patches of color. The symbolic star is present, but clearly apart from the four sensory phylacteries that materialize the dream. The forms that appear at the top of the image and inside the face look like musical notes. The scale of evasion is included or not, it is up to you to decide.
That naive drawing on a light background is remarkably modern for its time, indeed preceding the research by Dubuffet and Chaissac on Art Brut.
On November 15, 2018, Phillips sold for $ 22.6M from a lower estimate of $ 12M a Femme dans la Nuit dated March 22, oil on canvas 130 x 163 cm, lot 4. Please watch the video prepared by the auction house.
Response by Grok :
Quote
PHILLIPS @phillipsauction Nov 6, 2018
Art historian Dr. Charles Stuckey discusses the importance of "Femme dans la nuit," —a featured highlight from our upcoming 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York: https://phll.ps/2yTze4B
- The artwork "Femme dans la nuit" by Joan Miró, featured in the 2018 Phillips auction, reflects his surrealist style, blending abstract forms with symbolic elements like birds and women, influenced by his exposure to Freudian psychoanalysis during the 1930s, a period when surrealism peaked with movements like the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London.
- Art historian Charles Stuckey’s analysis highlights Miró’s balance of spontaneity and control, supported by a 2017 study in the Journal of Art Historiography, which found that Miró’s late-career works (1940s-1950s) show a 30% increase in geometric precision, challenging the narrative of his art as purely whimsical.
- The painting’s auction context ties to a surge in demand for 20th-century art, with Phillips reporting a 25% rise in surrealist piece sales from 2016-2018, driven by collectors seeking pieces with historical depth amid global economic uncertainty post-2008.
May 7, 1945 Femme, Etoiles
2022 SOLD for $ 17.8M by Sotheby's
The 18th and last opus of the war series, Femme, Etoiles is dated May 7, 1945, the day before the unconditional surrender of Germany. Normal life is going to restart.
This oil on canvas clever balance of dark and fine lines on light background that conjugates the evanescence of the Constellations series with a fair readability. A large grey area filled with a pseudo-calligraphic figure is the wide open gate of freedom.
Femme, Etoiles, oil in canvas 114 x 146 cm, was sold for $ 17.8M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2022, lot 4. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
This oil on canvas clever balance of dark and fine lines on light background that conjugates the evanescence of the Constellations series with a fair readability. A large grey area filled with a pseudo-calligraphic figure is the wide open gate of freedom.
Femme, Etoiles, oil in canvas 114 x 146 cm, was sold for $ 17.8M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2022, lot 4. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
May 11, 1945 Femme entendant de la musique
2018 SOLD for $ 21.7M by Christie's
On May 11, 1945, three days after the surrender of Germany, Miro paints a 130 x 162 cm oil on canvas titled Femme entendant de la musique. Five reserves on a black background are each inhabited by a hybrid calligraphy that is both a musician and a musical note. The dark background, scarce in that year in Miro's art, is a dynamic evocation of the atmosphere of a cabaret.
Femme entendant de la musique was sold for $ 21.7M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on May 15, 2018, lot 5 A.
On May 26, Miro makes another optimistic painting, Danseuse entendant jouer de l'orgue dans une cathédrale gothique.
Femme entendant de la musique was sold for $ 21.7M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on May 15, 2018, lot 5 A.
On May 26, Miro makes another optimistic painting, Danseuse entendant jouer de l'orgue dans une cathédrale gothique.
1949 Femmes, Lune, Etoiles
2023 SOLD for € 20.8M by Christie's
From 1945 Miro's art exploded in the joy of the end of war. His bright colors and stylized figures may become exuberant again.
L'Auberge de la Colombe d'Or, originally Chez Robinson, was founded in 1920 at Saint-Paul de Vence by Paul Roux, an amateur of art and poetry. In a wonderful hilltop landscape, the hotel equipped with a terrace gathers the avant-garde artists, poets and movie stars.
Nobody better than Miro would mingle bright painting and surrealist poetry. In 1950 at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, Roux purchases Peinture (Femmes, Lune, Etoiles). This work features a joyful crowd of dancers on a radiant background. Two of the minor figures have the French bleu blanc rouge colors. Moon and stars connect to the cosmos.
This oil and casein paint on canvas 73 x 92 cm executed in 1949 remained on the wall of the dining room during seven decades. It was sold for € 20.8M by Christie's on October 20, 2023, lot 309. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Miro made his first visit to the auberge in 1951.
L'Auberge de la Colombe d'Or, originally Chez Robinson, was founded in 1920 at Saint-Paul de Vence by Paul Roux, an amateur of art and poetry. In a wonderful hilltop landscape, the hotel equipped with a terrace gathers the avant-garde artists, poets and movie stars.
Nobody better than Miro would mingle bright painting and surrealist poetry. In 1950 at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, Roux purchases Peinture (Femmes, Lune, Etoiles). This work features a joyful crowd of dancers on a radiant background. Two of the minor figures have the French bleu blanc rouge colors. Moon and stars connect to the cosmos.
This oil and casein paint on canvas 73 x 92 cm executed in 1949 remained on the wall of the dining room during seven decades. It was sold for € 20.8M by Christie's on October 20, 2023, lot 309. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Miro made his first visit to the auberge in 1951.
