Lot 3527* - A193 Impressionist & Modern Art - Friday, 03. July 2020, 04.00 PM
JOAN MIRÓ
(Montroig 1893–1983 Palma de Mallorca)
Solitude III/III. 29 April 1960.
Oil and charcoal on cardboard.
Signed lower left: Miró. Signed, dated and titled on the reverse: MIRÓ. /29/4/60 / Solitude III/III.
75 × 105 cm.
Provenance:
- Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (with label on the reverse).
- Acquavella Galleries, New York.
- Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin/Zurich.
- Swiss property, purchased from the above gallery.
Exbhibitions:
- New York 1965, Cartones, Pierre Matisse Gallery, no. 5.
- New York 1972, Joan Miró: Magnetic Fields, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, no. 38 (with ill. p. 129).
- Berlin 2012, Joan Miró, Galerie Michael Haas, 16 March–21 April 2012.
- Lindau 2013, Miró Sternennächte, Roland Doschka, Stadtmuseum Lindau (with ill. p.70–71).
Literature:
- Jacques Dupin and Ariane Lelong-Mainaud: Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné, Paintings, vol. IV: 1959–1968, Paris 2002, p. 25, no. 1011 (with col. ill.).
- Magrit Rowell: Joan Miró. Peinture=Poesie, Paris 1976, p. 102.
- Jacques Dupin: Miró, Paris 1961, p. 552, no. 905 (with ill.).
In his 1961 monograph on the life and work of Joan Miro, Jacques Dupin describes the three works titled "Solitude", of which we are offering the third, as follows: "The very simplified, sensitive symbols appear to respond to one another across all the voids that divide them and the stains and clouds that encircle and suffocate them. These symbols, or rather signals, elude all bonds and structures and form a kind of negative script, perhaps similar to the twelve-tone music the painter has listened to often in recent years. […] It is no coincidence that this drawing appears in particular on three sheets of cardboard entitled 'Solitude', because the sensations they stir correspond to the meaning of this word. Every one of these scattered, tiny signals is primarily a symbol of the human, in solitude and threatened by the elements – however, as a written confession of our weakness and fear, the clarity and supple firmness of their brushstroke simultaneously testifies to our determination to resist and persevere. " (Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró, Leben und Werk, Cologne 1961).
In our Version III/III, the trail of small black dots particularly stands out: Miro employed a very similar arrangement in a horizontal line only one year later in one of his most famous works “Bleu II”, the second work of a large triptych now located in the Musée d' Art Moderne in the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
CHF 320 000 / 380 000 | (€ 329 900 / 391 750)
Sold for CHF 390 700 (including buyer’s premium)
All information is subject to change.