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Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)
LE COURTISAN GROTESQUE (NO. 6), 1965
watercolour, gouache, India ink, gray wash, pastel and pencil on paper
signed and numbered [6] lower right
16 by 11in. (41 by 28cm)
Provenance:
Christie’s, London, 2 May 2004, lot no. 432;
Manel Mayoral, Barcelona;
Nicholas Gallery, Belfast;
Taylor Gallery, Belfast
Exhibited:
Manel Mayoral, Barcelona, April 2005
A certificate of authenticity accompanies this lot.
Joan Miró was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. He has been interpreted as a surrealist
and abstract expressionist; however he was never closely aligned with any movement allowing his innovative approach to
ensure his influence on 20th century art.
The series ‘Le Courtisan Grotesque’ is inspired by a satirical play about the court of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, written
by Adrian de Monluc, Earl of Cramail in 1621. Miró was encouraged to paint the series, which includes twenty-four works
on paper, by his friend, printer and bibliophile of Russian origin Iliazd (Zdanevich Ilia). Only sixteen of the produced images
were used in the book that Iliazd edited in 1974. Miró had stated in an interview in 1948, ‘Now I rarely start a picture from
hallucination, as I did in the twenties, or, as later, from collages.What is most interesting to me today is the material I am
working with. It supplies the shock which suggests the form just as cracks in a wall suggested shapes to Leonardo.’
1
This
work, painted almost twenty years later, represents vibrant energy, humour and tragedy of life consisting of Miró’s favoured
vocabulary of fragmented human forms, spots of flat primary colours and shallow lines with constantly alternating rhythm.
1
Chipp B
.
, Herschel,
Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics
, University of California Press, 1968, p. 343
€
60,000-
€
80,000 (£48,000-£64,000 approx.)