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Lot Essay
LINES OF A NEW BEGINNING
Three important drawings by Joan Miró from 1930
The three Untitled drawings of 1930, lots 112, 129 and 155 of the present catalogue, were executed by Joan Miró a year after marrying Pilar Juncosa in Majorca. This was a very peculiar moment of the artist’s career. Following the mid-1920s expressive, spontaneous phase to which highly-celebrated series such as that of the Painting-poems belong, the years 1928-1930, were Miró’s most iconoclastic period. In 1929 Miró was undergoing a crisis in the development of his art, as if he felt the need to break away from the facility of his lyrical language, which threatened to become repetitive and sterile.
As Dupin put it: 'Miró was now touching absolute bottom. What brought him back to life was drawing. To get out of the impasse he was in, he had to make peace with his own sinuous line, so free and so experienced in every kind of magic. At Montroig in the summer of 1930, he executed a series of marvellous drawings, after which, in their spirit and utilizing the momentum they gave him, he painted one last large canvas with a white ground, different form the preceding ones in every respect.' (J. Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, London, 1962, p. 238).
The series of drawing, executed on Ingres paper (J. Dupin & A. Lelong-Mainaud, 2008, nos. 295-353), mainly treats the theme of the female body in a number of extraordinary daring variations, unequal in their plastic felicity, perhaps in connection with the image of his young bride form Majorca. This is particularly visible in the present lots, three equally wonderful yet very different depictions of the female figure. In Untitled, (lot 112) , the extremely elegant curves seem to suggest sensual lips and the female sexual organ, set within an arabesque of lines, typical of the highest example of Miró’s drawings in Conté crayon. The lunar-shaped head of the figure recalls some of the most oneiric symbols of the artist’s works, like the moon of his masterpiece Dog barking at the moon of 1926, in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Untitled (lot 155) touches on the theme of the couple, partially coming to terms with line as in many of the drawings from this series - set out to purify his means of expression - while freeing the curves elsewhere, to shape a soft, mysterious human form on the right.
In Untitled, (lot 129) finally, interlacing straight and curve lines cast a joyful, elegant female figure. In this beautiful drawing Miró manages to show his deep mastery in expressing grace through simplicity, richness through austerity. What seems to be a simple yet playful intersection of lines, becomes a harmonious synthesis of many characteristic features of Miró’s earlier series, such as the lyrical drawings of 1924-1925, and the Imaginary portraits executed in 1929.
The three drawings from 1930 presented in this catalogue have been purchased by the present owner in the late 1960s and have remained in the same private collection ever since; they have never been offered at auction before.
Three important drawings by Joan Miró from 1930
The three Untitled drawings of 1930, lots 112, 129 and 155 of the present catalogue, were executed by Joan Miró a year after marrying Pilar Juncosa in Majorca. This was a very peculiar moment of the artist’s career. Following the mid-1920s expressive, spontaneous phase to which highly-celebrated series such as that of the Painting-poems belong, the years 1928-1930, were Miró’s most iconoclastic period. In 1929 Miró was undergoing a crisis in the development of his art, as if he felt the need to break away from the facility of his lyrical language, which threatened to become repetitive and sterile.
As Dupin put it: 'Miró was now touching absolute bottom. What brought him back to life was drawing. To get out of the impasse he was in, he had to make peace with his own sinuous line, so free and so experienced in every kind of magic. At Montroig in the summer of 1930, he executed a series of marvellous drawings, after which, in their spirit and utilizing the momentum they gave him, he painted one last large canvas with a white ground, different form the preceding ones in every respect.' (J. Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, London, 1962, p. 238).
The series of drawing, executed on Ingres paper (J. Dupin & A. Lelong-Mainaud, 2008, nos. 295-353), mainly treats the theme of the female body in a number of extraordinary daring variations, unequal in their plastic felicity, perhaps in connection with the image of his young bride form Majorca. This is particularly visible in the present lots, three equally wonderful yet very different depictions of the female figure. In Untitled, (lot 112) , the extremely elegant curves seem to suggest sensual lips and the female sexual organ, set within an arabesque of lines, typical of the highest example of Miró’s drawings in Conté crayon. The lunar-shaped head of the figure recalls some of the most oneiric symbols of the artist’s works, like the moon of his masterpiece Dog barking at the moon of 1926, in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Untitled (lot 155) touches on the theme of the couple, partially coming to terms with line as in many of the drawings from this series - set out to purify his means of expression - while freeing the curves elsewhere, to shape a soft, mysterious human form on the right.
In Untitled, (lot 129) finally, interlacing straight and curve lines cast a joyful, elegant female figure. In this beautiful drawing Miró manages to show his deep mastery in expressing grace through simplicity, richness through austerity. What seems to be a simple yet playful intersection of lines, becomes a harmonious synthesis of many characteristic features of Miró’s earlier series, such as the lyrical drawings of 1924-1925, and the Imaginary portraits executed in 1929.
The three drawings from 1930 presented in this catalogue have been purchased by the present owner in the late 1960s and have remained in the same private collection ever since; they have never been offered at auction before.