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Artist or Maker: Miró, Joan (1893-1983)

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Description: Joan Miró (1893-1983)
Femme et oiseau
signed and numbered 'Miro 3/4' (on the right side of the base); stamped with the foundry mark 'Susse Fondeur Paris' (on the back of the base)
painted bronze
Height: 104 in. (264 cm.)
Conceived in 1967 and cast in a numbered edition of four plus one marked 0 and a nominative cast at a later date.

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Provenance: Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York.
Private collection, Florida.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

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Published: M. Tapié, Joan Miró, Milan, 1970, no. 161.
A. Jouffroy & J. Teixidor, Miró Sculptures, Paris, 1973, no. 57 (another cast illustated).
G. Diehl, Miró, Paris, 1974, p. 77.
P. Gimferrer, Miró: colpir sense nafrar, Barcelona, 1978, no. 177 (another cast illustrated p. 177).
R.M. Malet, Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1983, no. 124 (another cast illustrated).
P.A. Serra, Miró i Mallorca, Barcelona, 1984, no. 208 (another cast illustrated p. 158).
Fundació Joan Miró, Obra de Joan Miró, Barcelona, 1988, no. 1470, p. 399 (another cast illustrated p. 398).
B. Catoir, Miró on Mallorca, Munich and New York, 1995 (another cast illustrated p. 22).
E. Fernández Miró & P. Ortega Chapel, Joan Miró: Sculptures. Catalogue raisonné, 1928-1982, Paris, 2006, no. 106, p. 118 (another cast illustrated p. 119).

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Notes: VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium
Miró found his bearings as a sculptor in the solitary years of the Second World War, embracing the culture of peasant craft in rural Catalunya and Mallorca as a source for a new and vital approach to sculpture rooted in the world of objects. In notebooks from this time, Miró anticipated a new engagement with sculpture, writing: 'When sculpting, I start from the objects I collect, just as I make use of the stains on paper and imperfections in a canvas--do this here in the country in a way that is really alive, in touch with the elements of nature... I do it like a collage of various elements... that is the only thing--this magic spark--that counts in art' (in M. Rowell (ed.), Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1986, pp. 175, 191). By the late 1960s, his sculptures had become fully three-dimensional collages: 'My collages, today, are my sculptures,' Miró declared in 1977--and in these colorfully painted bronzes first conceived a decade earlier he raises his gift of metamorphosis to new heights (quoted in W. Jeffett, The Shape of Color: Joan Miró's Painted Sculpture, exh. cat., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2002, p. 33).

These later sculptures reflect retrospectively on Miró's oeuvre, invoking both the playful, risk-taking attitude of the Surrealists and the telluric nationalism more characteristic of his work upon his return to Spain. 'To paint, to sculpt, to etch, is maybe to give form to a myth,' Miró reflected in 1974. 'If I frequently integrate the objects as they are, with raw materials, it is not to obtain a plastic effect but by necessity...I need to walk on my earth, to live among my own, because everything that is popular is necessary for my work' (quoted in ibid., p. 21).

The elements of Femme et oiseau were regular objects gathered together in the studio built for Miró near Palma by his friend, Josep Lluís Sert, in 1956. 'The items he collected for the studio were not exactly practical in the conventional sense: millstones, rocks, butchers' wooden chopping blocks, a carpenter's bench, tins and cardboard boxes, some of which Miró would turn into sculptures or parts of sculptures. Once the useful life of these objects was over, he would set about re-inventing them. Bones, gourds, tins, all became part of his symbolic language.' (op. cit., p. 16-17). In the case of the present work, Miró's sketchbooks show that he took great pains to sketch out all the possible compositions on paper in advance and would then arrange the actual objects on the floor of the studio until he was satisfied with the arrangement. In Femme et oiseau, Miró brought together a traditional wooden pitchfork, with a wooden crate and a ball. The form and size of the planned sculpture would then influence which type of casting method would be employed (either lost-wax process or sand casting) and therefore this would also determine the foundry to be used. He would then follow the process through with the foundry step by step sometimes changing the arrangement or making interventions to vary surface texture. His patinated sculptures stood very much apart from his painted bronzes. The present painted bronze was cast by Susse, who along with Clémenti, cast the painted bronzes. Clémenti however, worked exclusively in lost-wax process whereas Susse worked in both lost-wax and sand casting. Miró and Susse had initially collaborated in 1962 and they continued working together into
late 1970s. Femme et oiseau was cast using the sand casting technique: in the process, a mould is made by firmly packing layers of very fine damp sand around the sculpture. When the original is removed an exact impression is left in the sand.

Miró began to add colour to his sculptures using 'ripolin' between 1967 and 1969, following an earlier suggestion by Alberto Giacometti, and used by Picasso in the same years. In Femme et oiseau, a black painted wooden crate is pierced with a bright yellow pitchfork, next to which sits a ball painted a vibrant red. Miró's use of bright primary and secondary colours for each component emphasized the individuality of each of the elements, setting them aside from the whole. In the present sculpture, femininity and fertility are represented by the red ball; in other works, it is an egg or a stone. The beak of the bird is possibly represented by the green cone-like element and the pitchfork a wing or plume.

Examples of Femme et oiseau were donated to the Maeght Fondation, in Saint-Paul, in the South of France, and Fondació Joan Miró, in Madrid.