Joan Miró - Editions & Works on Paper New York Monday, October 24, 2022 | Phillips

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  • "…Nowhere else do the aerial and the earthly, the familiar and the cosmic, so seamlessly interweave." —Carolyn Lachner, Joan Miró, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1993

    Thousands of galaxies are visible, seen in various stages of galactic evolution 
    that span 13.2 billion years of galaxy development, scattered across a black 
    backdrop of space. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

    Beginning in January 1940 and continuing over a period of 20 months, Miro created a series of 23 oil and gouache paintings on paper, each measuring 15 x 18 inches and containing related imagery of cosmic order – planets, suns, stars, crescent moons, birds, lovers – shining nocturnal jewels which became known as his Constellation series. These works were the culmination of a period of extreme turmoil at the beginning of World War II and Miró was forced to move his wife, Pilar, and daughter, Dolores, from the Normandy coast to Paris, down to other French towns in the south before taking shelter in Palma, Mallorca and then finally to his family farm in Montroig. There he finished the series in seclusion. The war made this time one of the most disruptive periods of his life, but these works are considered one of the greatest achievements of his career. The external chaos caused internal worlds filled with vitality to come to life. 
     
    After the original exhibition of the paintings at Pierre Matisse’s gallery in early 1945, the individual gouaches of the Constellations were all sold, widely dispersed and not reunited until 1959, when Pierre Matisse, with Miró’s full support, decided to publish an elaborate facsimile edition with stenciling. Both Miró and Matisse were determined to reproduce the gouaches as faithfully as possible. To this end the Parisian firm of Daniel Jacomet et Cie—“the best printer in this field” according to Matisse—was engaged, and all of the various owners agreed to allow their individual Constellations to be sent to Paris for color comparison. The resulting prints are of such high quality that, excluding their slight difference in size from the originals, they are virtually indistinguishable from their models. André Breton wrote the preface to the portfolio as well as individual poems, proses paralèles, to accompany each of the paintings reproduced.

    • Provenance

      Private Collection, New York

    • Literature

      Fernand Mourlot 260
      Patrick Cramer books 58

    • Catalogue Essay

      Including: Le Lever du soleil (Sunrise); L'Échelle de l'évasion (The Escape Ladder); Personnages dans la nuit guidés par les traces phosphorescentes des escargots (Figures at Night Guided by the Phosphorescent Tracks of Snails; Femmes sur la plage (Women on the Beach); Femme à la blonde aisselle coifffant sa chevelure à la lueur des étoiles (Woman with Blond Armpit Combing Her Hair by the Light of the Stars); L'Étoile matinale (Morning Star); Personnage blessé (Wounded Figure); Femme et oiseaux (Woman and Birds); Femme dans la nuit (Woman in the Night); Danseuses acrobates (Acobatic Dancers); Le 13 l'échelle a Frôlé le firmament (On the 13th the Ladder Brushed the Firmament); La Poétesse (The Poetess); Le Réveil au petit jour (Awakening in the Early Morning); Vers l'arc-en-ceil (Toward the Rainbow); Femmes encerclées par le vol d'un oiseau (Women Encircled by the Flight of a Bird); L'Oiseau-migrateur (The Migratory Bird); Chiffres et constellations amoureux d'une femme (Ciphers and Constellations in Love with a Woman) and Le Crépuscule rose caresse le sexe des femmes et des oiseaux (The Pink Dusk Caresses the Sex of Women and Birds).

      The Constellations’ titles reflect Miró’s life-long love of poetry; some suggest simple introductory lines, while others carry the elaborateness of full verse. These titles appear inscribed on the back of each Constellation in a manner unique to Miró’s work: his signature appears over meticulously contoured titles, followed by the place and date of completion, punctuated throughout by minuscule ciphers and stars, all encircled by the arabesques lines of an individual drawing. Each of these drawings surrounding the inscriptions outlines a two-legged creature, within whose head the information concerning each work is written.

      The Constellations were received as the first works produced by a major European artist during the war to reach this country, and had a great impact on the generation of American artists who became known as Abstract Expressionists. Their effect on young Americans has been widely noted, and particularly commented on as having been of special importance to Jackson Pollock. In the more complex, later Constellations, the evenness with which the elements are scattered across the picture surface engenders a kind of over-all configuration similar, albeit in miniature, to that which would characterize Pollock’s mature style. Clement Greenberg wrote in 1948 that the composition to be found in the Constellations was the “composition of cubism”, which he defined by quoting Gertrude Stein: “a composition that had neither a beginning nor an end, a composition of which one corner was as important as another corner.” This description could well be applied to the composition of Pollock’s later drip paintings.

      Lilian Tone, The Journey of Miró’s Constellations, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1993, pp. 4-6

10

Constellations (M. 260, C. bks 58)

1959
The set of one lithograph in colors and 18 pochoir reproductions in colors after gouaches by the artist (lacking plates 11, 17, 20 and 22), on Arches paper, with full margins and the full sheets, with title page, text in French by André Breton, table of contents and justification, loose (as issued), with the original paper folio printed in colors and the title in black on the front, the prints contained in original paper folios, all contained within the original beige canvas-covered portfolio.
lithograph I. 11 3/4 x 9 1/4 in. (29.8 x 23.5 cm)
all approx. S. 14 1/8 x 17 in. (35.9 x 43.2 cm)
portfolio 16 5/8 x 15 x 2 in. (42.2 x 38.1 x 5.1 cm)

Signed by the artist in blue ink and the author in red ink on the justification page and numbered 151 (printed), the lithograph signed and numbered 151/350 in pencil (there were also 22 in Roman numerals and 12 hors commerce copies), printed by Mourlot Fréres and Atelier Lacourière et Frélaut, Paris, published by Pierre Matisse, New York.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$25,000 - 35,000 

Sold for $37,800

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Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 24 - 26 October 2022