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Lot Essay
Painted in February 1931, Femmes, Homme belongs to one of the most important artistic shifts of Miró's career. As early as 1927, the artist's notorious declaration that he wanted to 'assassinate painting' had been cited by the critic Maurice Raynal (Maurice Raynal quoted in W. Jeffrett, 'Miró's unhappy consciousness: relief sculptures and objects, 1930-1932', in Joan Miró 1917-1934, Paris, p. 81) and, by 1931, Miró was vehemently resisting the mannered traps and habits he associated with conventional painting. By the end of the 1920s, for Miró, as for many of the French Surrealists, the term 'painting' had taken on negative connotations including a reliance on convention over artistic innovation, 'bourgeois' values and monetary reward. With this in mind, Miró embarked on a period of frenetic experimentation in which he alternated between collage, painting and assemblages, refusing to be pinned down or categorised.
In 1931, Georges Hugnet, the French poet and critic and the first owner of the present work, suggested that 'if Miró wanted to assassinate painting, he did so through plastic means' (G. Hugnet, 'Joan Miró ou l'enfance de l'art' in Cahiers d'Art, vol. 6, Paris, p. 339). Indeed, in Femmes, Homme, Miró moved beyond the conventional picture surface by mixing sand and paint into a thick paste and building it onto the canvas. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, a number of Surrealist artists, including Salvador Dalí and André Masson, experimented with sand, favouring it for its unpredictable movement and shape. This enabled automatic creation and the removal of conscious thought and intervention from the artistic process. In the present work, Miró has allowed the sand to take over the picture surface as the cracks, flakes and lumps are spread, at random, throughout.
This textured, pitted surface and the fine lines of the figures may also link to primitive cave paintings which had already begun to fascinate Miró by 1931. From 1930, critics saw Miró's work as a retreat to the elemental nature of primitive or childhood art; as Carl Einstein noted, 'This was the defeat of virtuosity. Intuition became ascendant. The mark of a greater independence. Prehistoric simplicity' (Carl Einstein quoted in C. Green, 'Joan Miró, 1923-1933: The Last and First Painter', in Joan Miró 1893-1993, Barcelona, p. 76). In the early 1930s, the photographer and fellow Surrealist, Brassaï, was capturing images of Parisian graffiti, seeing it, like primitive art, as a laudable example of pure and unfettered creativity. The textured, granular surface and fine lines of Femmes, Homme certainly display visual parallels with the coarse, gritty walls and incised lines of Brassaï's graffiti.
Miró's preoccupation with the intuitive production of art can be seen in the free and spontaneous line of the figures in the present work. The artist himself stated that his work 'always arises out of a hallucinatory state for which I am in no way responsible' (Miró, quoted in C. Green, 'Joan Miró, 1923-1933: The Last and First Painter' in Joan Miró 1893-1993, Barcelona, p. 70). The overall feeling of the composition is lyrical and dreamlike. The two female figures whirl around the central male, their colourful skirts flying as they appear to dance and pivot around the male in a golden haze.
In 1931, Georges Hugnet, the French poet and critic and the first owner of the present work, suggested that 'if Miró wanted to assassinate painting, he did so through plastic means' (G. Hugnet, 'Joan Miró ou l'enfance de l'art' in Cahiers d'Art, vol. 6, Paris, p. 339). Indeed, in Femmes, Homme, Miró moved beyond the conventional picture surface by mixing sand and paint into a thick paste and building it onto the canvas. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, a number of Surrealist artists, including Salvador Dalí and André Masson, experimented with sand, favouring it for its unpredictable movement and shape. This enabled automatic creation and the removal of conscious thought and intervention from the artistic process. In the present work, Miró has allowed the sand to take over the picture surface as the cracks, flakes and lumps are spread, at random, throughout.
This textured, pitted surface and the fine lines of the figures may also link to primitive cave paintings which had already begun to fascinate Miró by 1931. From 1930, critics saw Miró's work as a retreat to the elemental nature of primitive or childhood art; as Carl Einstein noted, 'This was the defeat of virtuosity. Intuition became ascendant. The mark of a greater independence. Prehistoric simplicity' (Carl Einstein quoted in C. Green, 'Joan Miró, 1923-1933: The Last and First Painter', in Joan Miró 1893-1993, Barcelona, p. 76). In the early 1930s, the photographer and fellow Surrealist, Brassaï, was capturing images of Parisian graffiti, seeing it, like primitive art, as a laudable example of pure and unfettered creativity. The textured, granular surface and fine lines of Femmes, Homme certainly display visual parallels with the coarse, gritty walls and incised lines of Brassaï's graffiti.
Miró's preoccupation with the intuitive production of art can be seen in the free and spontaneous line of the figures in the present work. The artist himself stated that his work 'always arises out of a hallucinatory state for which I am in no way responsible' (Miró, quoted in C. Green, 'Joan Miró, 1923-1933: The Last and First Painter' in Joan Miró 1893-1993, Barcelona, p. 70). The overall feeling of the composition is lyrical and dreamlike. The two female figures whirl around the central male, their colourful skirts flying as they appear to dance and pivot around the male in a golden haze.