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拍品专文
In his publication on the artist, Jacques Dupin described the early 1930s as years of significant development in Miró’s work: “It was just at this time that [Miró’s] art underwent changes as sudden and far reaching as to deserve the term cataclysmic. The serene works of the years devoted to concentration on plastic concerns and to spiritual control of figures and signs now gave way to a new outburst of subjectivism, to a expressionistic unleashing of instinctual forces. The volcano which for some years now had been quiescent suddenly erupted. The clear skies suddenly clouded over, and a violet storm proceeded to darken the peaceful artistic climate—indeed, to shake Miró’s art to its foundation” (Joan Miró: Life and Work, London, 1962, p. 262). His career was on a steady track—in 1935 there were exhibitions of his work in Brussels, Tenerife and Prague—and his private and family life was settled and harmonious. Miró was nevertheless attuned to the political and social currents around him, and in a series of pastels drawn in the summer of 1934 he suddenly evoked a new and startling sense of menace. These were the first of a series of works executed over the next four years which the artist himself called his "savage paintings." As Jacques Dupin has observed, the year 1935 in which the present work, Signes et figurations, was completed, marked an abrupt change in Miró's painting. The artist's imagination turned to grotesque, savage and anxiety-ridden imagery. "From the beginning of 1935, and for some years thereafter, no matter what Miró set out to do, his brush conjured up nothing but monsters" (ibid., p. 265).
The present work falls into this period of Miró's fervent creativity. With its brilliant colors and the biomorphic figures floating through these watercolor planes, Signes et figurations is a fine example of Miró's rendering of his earlier Surrealist dream paintings. As Roland Penrose observed on the works of 1935: “The biomorphic shapes in pure color, which had moved in rhythmic dance in the compositions of 1933, now became solidified into fierce embodiments of female monsters seen in brilliant color” (Miró, London, 1970, pp. 49-51).
In a letter to Pierre Matisse dated October 6, 1935, Miró calls this stage in his career an “auto-revision of my work” The subject used by the artist is very familiar to him as he is looking at his surroundings in Montroig: the peasant, his wife, the rooster and the beautiful landscape. The difference with the similar theme painted in the mid-20s is that now the farm had gone mad, everything was wild and in hysteria, and the artist was unable to keep these monsters away. Created in the shadow of the approaching storm of the Spanish Civil War, these fantastical creatures of his vision are present and will stay for the years to come. Dupin notes that Miró attempted to fight off the growing presence of these monstrous figures in his work and this effort is best expressed through his gouaches of 1935: "The gouaches done in the summer of 1935 have shown us how Miró was sometimes surprised and overwhelmed by the images of terror that pursued him. We saw, too, how sometimes he succeeded, by force of will or trickery, to drive them away or otherwise get free of them. He had not accepted their intrusion as an irresistible fatality, still less as a possible means of salvation. In the end, however, the monsters defeated him; they came to stay. In the fall of 1935 he realized that he would be able to free himself from them, if ever, only by putting all his resources at their disposal—his palette, his line, his sensibility, and his intelligence" (ibid., p. 199). After the 1930s, these monsters will continue to appear as specters in the artist's oeuvre, but becoming in later years familiar and amusing, as if friendly companions.
The present work falls into this period of Miró's fervent creativity. With its brilliant colors and the biomorphic figures floating through these watercolor planes, Signes et figurations is a fine example of Miró's rendering of his earlier Surrealist dream paintings. As Roland Penrose observed on the works of 1935: “The biomorphic shapes in pure color, which had moved in rhythmic dance in the compositions of 1933, now became solidified into fierce embodiments of female monsters seen in brilliant color” (Miró, London, 1970, pp. 49-51).
In a letter to Pierre Matisse dated October 6, 1935, Miró calls this stage in his career an “auto-revision of my work” The subject used by the artist is very familiar to him as he is looking at his surroundings in Montroig: the peasant, his wife, the rooster and the beautiful landscape. The difference with the similar theme painted in the mid-20s is that now the farm had gone mad, everything was wild and in hysteria, and the artist was unable to keep these monsters away. Created in the shadow of the approaching storm of the Spanish Civil War, these fantastical creatures of his vision are present and will stay for the years to come. Dupin notes that Miró attempted to fight off the growing presence of these monstrous figures in his work and this effort is best expressed through his gouaches of 1935: "The gouaches done in the summer of 1935 have shown us how Miró was sometimes surprised and overwhelmed by the images of terror that pursued him. We saw, too, how sometimes he succeeded, by force of will or trickery, to drive them away or otherwise get free of them. He had not accepted their intrusion as an irresistible fatality, still less as a possible means of salvation. In the end, however, the monsters defeated him; they came to stay. In the fall of 1935 he realized that he would be able to free himself from them, if ever, only by putting all his resources at their disposal—his palette, his line, his sensibility, and his intelligence" (ibid., p. 199). After the 1930s, these monsters will continue to appear as specters in the artist's oeuvre, but becoming in later years familiar and amusing, as if friendly companions.