Lot Essay
Miró's La Poétesse belongs to an exquisite series of twenty-three gouaches collectively known as the Constellations. This complete cycle of creativity related in size, medium and imagery (sun, stars, birds, lovers) was for the artist the culmination of a period of intense withdrawal due to the outbreak of World War II. Begun in Varengeville-sur-Mer in 1939, Miró continued to work on the series in Palma de Mallorca finally finishing it in Montroig in September of 1941. The spontaneous vitality of these paintings belie the fact that Miró worked with an amazing techinical exactitude. Discussing this astounding achievement, Carolyn Lachner has written:
The immense moral, intuitive, and physical
concentration Miró imposed on himself in making
these little paintings sparked what is arguably
the most brilliant expression of his inner
vision. Nowhere else do the aerial and the
earthly, the familiar and the cosmic, so
seamlessly interweave. (exh. cat., Joan Miró,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1993, p. 71)
In 1939, the artist retreated from the threat of war and moved from Paris to Varengeville-sur-Mer in Normandy. There in the seclusion of Normandy, Miró could escape from external reality taking flight into his inner reality. Thus, it was in this environment that he could concentrate in silence, devote himself to painting and began work on the first of his Constellations. In an interview with James Sweeney, the artist stated his intentions for the series:
At Varengeville-sur-Mer, in 1939, began a new
stage in my work... It was about the time when the
war broke out. I felt a deep desire to escape. I
closed myself within myself purposely. The night,
music, and the stars began to play a major role in
suggesting my paintings. Music had always appealed
to me, and now music in this period began to take
the role poetry had played in the early twenties,
especially Bach and Mozart, when I went back to
Majorca upon the fall of France. Also the material
of my painting began to take a new importance.
(J.J. Sweeney, "Joan Miró: Comment and Interview",
Partisan Review, Feb., 1948, p. 210)
Having believed he and his family would be safe from the threat of war in Varengeville, they now had no other choice but to flee again, as the German army was quickly advancing on France. Miró, his wife Pilar and young daughter Dolores left Varengeville-sur-Mer in a panic in late May of 1940 and made a hazardous journey through France to return to their native land. Once in Spain, they were advised not to go to Barcelona, so they settled in Palma with members of his wife's family. Carolyn Lachner writes about the effect of the war on Miró's art:
The Constellations, as a group and singly, are
among the miracles that art occasionally bestows,
and no more do we need to know the context of
their making to be moved by them than we need to
know that Picasso's Tomato Plant of 1944 is
fraught with allusions to the war to find
fascination in it. Nonetheless, the act of self-
extrication accomplished by the creation of the
Constellations is an example of triumphant moral
courage and unwavering will whose repercussions
reach beyong the group. Writing in 1958 about
the Constellations, Breton was quite clear on this
point. After evoking the situation in May and
June 1940 through the image of "cars bedecked with
the heavy stripes of mattresses drifting helplessly
along all the roads of France," he goes on:
The situation in art (the art of high adventure and
discovery) has never been so precarious as it was
in Europe during the summer of 1940, when its doom
appeared to be sealed...the annihilation of such
art, which was both the product and the generative
force of liberty, featured prominantly among the
invader's plans.... We feared...the same
defections that had occurred, under far less
pressure, during the First World War, when some of
the greatest names in art abandoned their advanced
positions and took refuge in alignment.... It is
to the glory of a new generation of artists that
nothing of the sort happened this time, and in
this respect Joan Miró offers us one of the most
outstanding examples of character. Resistance on
this plane can be considered an integral part of the
whole Resistance movement.... Miró, at this hour
of extreme anguish...unfurl[ed] the full range of
his voice. (exh. cat., Joan Miró, Museum of
Modern Art, New York, 1993, pp. 70-71)
After the peintures sauvages style of the thirties reflecting the artist's distress throughout the Spanish Civil War with the black skies and black suns, the Constellations symbolized for Miró a rebirth of faith in man's role in the cosmic order after the "dark night." He writes about the series in his Catalan Notebooks:
I remember when I was working on the Constellations
in Palma in 1940. In the morning about ten I used
to go to the cathedral to listen to the organ. At
that time of morning nobody was around, except the
organist practicing, and I used to linger a long
while. There was the organ music, occasionally
singing, and the sunlight reflected through the
stained glass windows (fabulous, those windows), and
the canons with their red vestments in the dim light.
(B. Rose, exh. cat., Miró in America, Houston
Museum of Fine Arts, 1982, p. 34)
Miró read voraciously during this time and became fascinated by the Spanish mystics, St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa. Discussing the compositional balance of this series the artist recalled:
I would set out with no preconceived idea. A few
forms suggested here would call for other forms
elsewhere to balance them. These in turn demanded
others...I would take it [each gouache] up day
after day to paint in other tiny spots, stars,
washes, infinitesimal dots of color in order to
achieve a full and complex equilibrium. (J.J. Sweeney,
op. cit., p. 211)
La Poétesse, the fourteenth constellation, was completed on December 31, 1940 in Palma de Mallorca. Miró created a delicate and vast cosmic network of intersecting black lines and richly colored shapes. The images inspired by the night, seem to float effortlessly on a thinly washed background. The entire surface bathed in nocturnal light is mobilized with lines darting forth defining figures and stars. The additional layer of intense flashes of color give the impression of sparks in the night. This dense, all-over articulation of surface offered a new interpretation of compositional order that would inspire an emerging generation of artists. Jackson Pollock would later take Miró's radical concept a step further with his "all-over" drip paintings. Here in Palma, while living in complete isolation, the artist painted La Poétesse, one of the most poetic and lyrical of the series.
From January to May of 1940 in Varengeville, Miró compeleted the first ten constellations. In August, now back in Spain, following his journey from France, he resumed intense work on them as though nothing had happened. Large figures and animals combined with circular black voids comprised the artist's first constellations. He then began to mix the shapes with figures adding more linear connections until there was an overall density to the entire surface. The final work from the series Passage of the Divine Bird was completed on September 12, 1941. The intervals between each finished painting varied from three days to almost two months.
The series as a whole is extraordinary in quality,
and nearly all its pictures have the signature of
total conviction. These paintings also have
impressive carrying power for works executed on so
small a scale; the tiny forms interlock and
unravel with a delicious inevitability.... (J.T. Soby,
exh. cat., Joan Miró, Museum of Modern Art, New
York, 1959, pp. 100-106)
One gouache from the group was given by the artist to his wife, Pilar, with the remaining twenty-two shown for the first time in New York at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1945 (they had been smuggled out of Spain by diplomatic pouch for the exhibition!). All twenty-two of the Constellations were sold and the exhibition was an immense success (figs. 1 and 2), especially with artists, as the exhibition was the first message about the state of art in Europe to reach America. Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Colin purchased La Poétesse from the Pierre Matisse Gallery and it has remained in their collection ever since.
The immense moral, intuitive, and physical
concentration Miró imposed on himself in making
these little paintings sparked what is arguably
the most brilliant expression of his inner
vision. Nowhere else do the aerial and the
earthly, the familiar and the cosmic, so
seamlessly interweave. (exh. cat., Joan Miró,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1993, p. 71)
In 1939, the artist retreated from the threat of war and moved from Paris to Varengeville-sur-Mer in Normandy. There in the seclusion of Normandy, Miró could escape from external reality taking flight into his inner reality. Thus, it was in this environment that he could concentrate in silence, devote himself to painting and began work on the first of his Constellations. In an interview with James Sweeney, the artist stated his intentions for the series:
At Varengeville-sur-Mer, in 1939, began a new
stage in my work... It was about the time when the
war broke out. I felt a deep desire to escape. I
closed myself within myself purposely. The night,
music, and the stars began to play a major role in
suggesting my paintings. Music had always appealed
to me, and now music in this period began to take
the role poetry had played in the early twenties,
especially Bach and Mozart, when I went back to
Majorca upon the fall of France. Also the material
of my painting began to take a new importance.
(J.J. Sweeney, "Joan Miró: Comment and Interview",
Partisan Review, Feb., 1948, p. 210)
Having believed he and his family would be safe from the threat of war in Varengeville, they now had no other choice but to flee again, as the German army was quickly advancing on France. Miró, his wife Pilar and young daughter Dolores left Varengeville-sur-Mer in a panic in late May of 1940 and made a hazardous journey through France to return to their native land. Once in Spain, they were advised not to go to Barcelona, so they settled in Palma with members of his wife's family. Carolyn Lachner writes about the effect of the war on Miró's art:
The Constellations, as a group and singly, are
among the miracles that art occasionally bestows,
and no more do we need to know the context of
their making to be moved by them than we need to
know that Picasso's Tomato Plant of 1944 is
fraught with allusions to the war to find
fascination in it. Nonetheless, the act of self-
extrication accomplished by the creation of the
Constellations is an example of triumphant moral
courage and unwavering will whose repercussions
reach beyong the group. Writing in 1958 about
the Constellations, Breton was quite clear on this
point. After evoking the situation in May and
June 1940 through the image of "cars bedecked with
the heavy stripes of mattresses drifting helplessly
along all the roads of France," he goes on:
The situation in art (the art of high adventure and
discovery) has never been so precarious as it was
in Europe during the summer of 1940, when its doom
appeared to be sealed...the annihilation of such
art, which was both the product and the generative
force of liberty, featured prominantly among the
invader's plans.... We feared...the same
defections that had occurred, under far less
pressure, during the First World War, when some of
the greatest names in art abandoned their advanced
positions and took refuge in alignment.... It is
to the glory of a new generation of artists that
nothing of the sort happened this time, and in
this respect Joan Miró offers us one of the most
outstanding examples of character. Resistance on
this plane can be considered an integral part of the
whole Resistance movement.... Miró, at this hour
of extreme anguish...unfurl[ed] the full range of
his voice. (exh. cat., Joan Miró, Museum of
Modern Art, New York, 1993, pp. 70-71)
After the peintures sauvages style of the thirties reflecting the artist's distress throughout the Spanish Civil War with the black skies and black suns, the Constellations symbolized for Miró a rebirth of faith in man's role in the cosmic order after the "dark night." He writes about the series in his Catalan Notebooks:
I remember when I was working on the Constellations
in Palma in 1940. In the morning about ten I used
to go to the cathedral to listen to the organ. At
that time of morning nobody was around, except the
organist practicing, and I used to linger a long
while. There was the organ music, occasionally
singing, and the sunlight reflected through the
stained glass windows (fabulous, those windows), and
the canons with their red vestments in the dim light.
(B. Rose, exh. cat., Miró in America, Houston
Museum of Fine Arts, 1982, p. 34)
Miró read voraciously during this time and became fascinated by the Spanish mystics, St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa. Discussing the compositional balance of this series the artist recalled:
I would set out with no preconceived idea. A few
forms suggested here would call for other forms
elsewhere to balance them. These in turn demanded
others...I would take it [each gouache] up day
after day to paint in other tiny spots, stars,
washes, infinitesimal dots of color in order to
achieve a full and complex equilibrium. (J.J. Sweeney,
op. cit., p. 211)
La Poétesse, the fourteenth constellation, was completed on December 31, 1940 in Palma de Mallorca. Miró created a delicate and vast cosmic network of intersecting black lines and richly colored shapes. The images inspired by the night, seem to float effortlessly on a thinly washed background. The entire surface bathed in nocturnal light is mobilized with lines darting forth defining figures and stars. The additional layer of intense flashes of color give the impression of sparks in the night. This dense, all-over articulation of surface offered a new interpretation of compositional order that would inspire an emerging generation of artists. Jackson Pollock would later take Miró's radical concept a step further with his "all-over" drip paintings. Here in Palma, while living in complete isolation, the artist painted La Poétesse, one of the most poetic and lyrical of the series.
From January to May of 1940 in Varengeville, Miró compeleted the first ten constellations. In August, now back in Spain, following his journey from France, he resumed intense work on them as though nothing had happened. Large figures and animals combined with circular black voids comprised the artist's first constellations. He then began to mix the shapes with figures adding more linear connections until there was an overall density to the entire surface. The final work from the series Passage of the Divine Bird was completed on September 12, 1941. The intervals between each finished painting varied from three days to almost two months.
The series as a whole is extraordinary in quality,
and nearly all its pictures have the signature of
total conviction. These paintings also have
impressive carrying power for works executed on so
small a scale; the tiny forms interlock and
unravel with a delicious inevitability.... (J.T. Soby,
exh. cat., Joan Miró, Museum of Modern Art, New
York, 1959, pp. 100-106)
One gouache from the group was given by the artist to his wife, Pilar, with the remaining twenty-two shown for the first time in New York at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1945 (they had been smuggled out of Spain by diplomatic pouch for the exhibition!). All twenty-two of the Constellations were sold and the exhibition was an immense success (figs. 1 and 2), especially with artists, as the exhibition was the first message about the state of art in Europe to reach America. Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Colin purchased La Poétesse from the Pierre Matisse Gallery and it has remained in their collection ever since.