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Ensayo del lote
Conceived in 1972, Joan Miró’s L’Oiseau au plumage rougeâtre annonce l’apparition de la femme éblouissante de beauté (The Russet-Feathered Bird Announces the Appearance of the Dazzlingly Beautiful Woman) is an extraordinary expression of the artist’s boundless imagination and his remarkable ability to transform the most unexpected materials into works of sculptural invention. Rising more than seven feet in height, the composition unfolds around a slender, tree-like stem, from which an improbable assortment of forms emerges in a delicate and seemingly precarious balance. A rounded, disc-like shape punctuates the lower section, while a forked branch supports a succession of curious objects, culminating in an irregular, almost bird-like silhouette at its summit. The varied textures of the bronze, animated by rich green and earthy tones, accentuate the contrasts between the smooth, organic contours of the central structure and the rougher surfaces of the assembled elements. At once playful and monumental, the sculpture hovers between the recognizable and the fantastical, its disparate components transformed into an enigmatic creature that seems to have sprung directly from Miró’s imagination.
The sculpture’s wonderfully evocative title is itself integral to this transformation. The bird and the dazzlingly beautiful woman exist less as clearly defined figures than as fleeting suggestions, emerging from the unexpected relationships between the assembled objects. As the viewer moves around the work, familiar shapes take on new associations, their identities shifting between the human, animal, and vegetal worlds. This interplay between reality and imagination had long been central to Miró’s artistic vision, finding particularly inventive expression in the assemblage sculptures that came to dominate his later career. Rather than modeling his subjects according to traditional sculptural conventions, Miró brought together objects whose forms, textures, and associations could give rise to entirely new images. In the catalogue accompanying the 1976 exhibition at Pierre Matisse Gallery, he described this transformation: “Real objects, by being used, related and assembled in different manners, become unreal” (J. Miró, quoted in Miró Sculpture, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1976). In L’Oiseau au plumage rougeâtre annonce l’apparition de la femme éblouissante de beauté, the seemingly arbitrary encounter of these objects becomes a composition of remarkable coherence and poetic vitality.
Miró’s fascination with found objects had its origins in the Surrealist experiments of the 1920s and 1930s, but acquired renewed importance during the Second World War, when he returned to his native Catalonia and began collecting discarded materials and natural objects during his walks through the countryside and along the coast. Branches, stones, bones, and abandoned household objects accumulated in his studio, where they awaited the moment when an unexpected association might suggest the beginnings of a sculpture. His close friend and biographer Jacques Dupin described this process as an imaginative harvest, in which objects discarded or forgotten by man and nature became the raw materials for surprising metamorphoses (J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 1993, p. 374). By casting these assemblages in bronze, Miró united their disparate textures and forms in a single, enduring material, elevating the ephemeral and ordinary to the realm of monumental sculpture. The resulting works retain the immediacy and wit of their humble origins while acquiring a new sense of permanence and sculptural presence.
The creation of L’Oiseau au plumage rougeâtre annonce l’apparition de la femme éblouissante de beauté was itself the subject of an extraordinary contemporary document. In 1973, the filmmaker Clovis Prévost recorded Miró at work on the sculpture in Miró sculpteur, a documentary filmed principally at the Clémenti foundry in Meudon, outside Paris. The film offers a rare glimpse into the artist’s creative process, revealing the imaginative experimentation underlying his seemingly spontaneous combinations of objects. This direct record of the sculpture’s development is particularly compelling in light of the finished bronze, whose graceful, almost effortless equilibrium belies the careful consideration of each element’s placement and relationship to the whole. It also reflects the importance Miró attached to sculpture during these years, when the expressive possibilities of found objects allowed him to extend the poetic vocabulary of his paintings into three dimensions.
The present cast has a particularly distinguished history. Cast during Miró’s lifetime at the Clémenti foundry, it was exhibited at Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York in April 1976, appearing as no. 20 in the gallery’s Miró Sculpture exhibition, where it was illustrated in the accompanying catalogue. Pierre Matisse had been one of Miró’s most important champions in the United States since the 1930s, and his gallery played a central role in introducing successive generations of American collectors to the artist’s work. On 13 May 1976, shortly after the exhibition opened, the present bronze was acquired directly from the gallery by the late owner, in whose distinguished New York collection it has remained for half a century. This exceptional history, together with the rare documentation of the sculpture’s creation, lends the present cast a special significance. Monumental in scale yet animated by an irrepressible sense of wit and fantasy, L’Oiseau au plumage rougeâtre annonce l’apparition de la femme éblouissante de beauté beautifully encapsulates Miró’s ability to reveal extraordinary possibilities within the most ordinary things.
The sculpture’s wonderfully evocative title is itself integral to this transformation. The bird and the dazzlingly beautiful woman exist less as clearly defined figures than as fleeting suggestions, emerging from the unexpected relationships between the assembled objects. As the viewer moves around the work, familiar shapes take on new associations, their identities shifting between the human, animal, and vegetal worlds. This interplay between reality and imagination had long been central to Miró’s artistic vision, finding particularly inventive expression in the assemblage sculptures that came to dominate his later career. Rather than modeling his subjects according to traditional sculptural conventions, Miró brought together objects whose forms, textures, and associations could give rise to entirely new images. In the catalogue accompanying the 1976 exhibition at Pierre Matisse Gallery, he described this transformation: “Real objects, by being used, related and assembled in different manners, become unreal” (J. Miró, quoted in Miró Sculpture, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1976). In L’Oiseau au plumage rougeâtre annonce l’apparition de la femme éblouissante de beauté, the seemingly arbitrary encounter of these objects becomes a composition of remarkable coherence and poetic vitality.
Miró’s fascination with found objects had its origins in the Surrealist experiments of the 1920s and 1930s, but acquired renewed importance during the Second World War, when he returned to his native Catalonia and began collecting discarded materials and natural objects during his walks through the countryside and along the coast. Branches, stones, bones, and abandoned household objects accumulated in his studio, where they awaited the moment when an unexpected association might suggest the beginnings of a sculpture. His close friend and biographer Jacques Dupin described this process as an imaginative harvest, in which objects discarded or forgotten by man and nature became the raw materials for surprising metamorphoses (J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 1993, p. 374). By casting these assemblages in bronze, Miró united their disparate textures and forms in a single, enduring material, elevating the ephemeral and ordinary to the realm of monumental sculpture. The resulting works retain the immediacy and wit of their humble origins while acquiring a new sense of permanence and sculptural presence.
The creation of L’Oiseau au plumage rougeâtre annonce l’apparition de la femme éblouissante de beauté was itself the subject of an extraordinary contemporary document. In 1973, the filmmaker Clovis Prévost recorded Miró at work on the sculpture in Miró sculpteur, a documentary filmed principally at the Clémenti foundry in Meudon, outside Paris. The film offers a rare glimpse into the artist’s creative process, revealing the imaginative experimentation underlying his seemingly spontaneous combinations of objects. This direct record of the sculpture’s development is particularly compelling in light of the finished bronze, whose graceful, almost effortless equilibrium belies the careful consideration of each element’s placement and relationship to the whole. It also reflects the importance Miró attached to sculpture during these years, when the expressive possibilities of found objects allowed him to extend the poetic vocabulary of his paintings into three dimensions.
The present cast has a particularly distinguished history. Cast during Miró’s lifetime at the Clémenti foundry, it was exhibited at Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York in April 1976, appearing as no. 20 in the gallery’s Miró Sculpture exhibition, where it was illustrated in the accompanying catalogue. Pierre Matisse had been one of Miró’s most important champions in the United States since the 1930s, and his gallery played a central role in introducing successive generations of American collectors to the artist’s work. On 13 May 1976, shortly after the exhibition opened, the present bronze was acquired directly from the gallery by the late owner, in whose distinguished New York collection it has remained for half a century. This exceptional history, together with the rare documentation of the sculpture’s creation, lends the present cast a special significance. Monumental in scale yet animated by an irrepressible sense of wit and fantasy, L’Oiseau au plumage rougeâtre annonce l’apparition de la femme éblouissante de beauté beautifully encapsulates Miró’s ability to reveal extraordinary possibilities within the most ordinary things.