Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÁ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
"Danseuse", 1919.
Pencil on paper.
Provenance: Henriette & André Gompes collection.
Signed and dated.
Attached certificate of ADOM.
Measurements: 18 x 16 cm.

This drawing that Joan Miró made in 1919 showing a dancer with tambourine is a valuable work, due to its rarity, an unusual theme and treatment in the artistic career of the Catalan painter. The work is part of Miró's early period, when he was still exploring figurative language before moving into surrealism. The drawing shows his interest in capturing the human figure with clear lines and harmonious proportions. In it we can already sense an essentialist purification of forms. The representation of a dancer with a traditional costume and tambourine reflects an interest in traditional themes, linked to popular culture, which would also appear in a more stylized language in later works.

Joan Miró was trained in Barcelona, between the Escuela de la Lonja and the Galí Academy. Already in the early date of 1918 he held his first exhibition, in the Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona. In 1920 he moved to Paris and met Picasso, Raynal, Max Jacob, Tzara and the Dadaists. There, under the influence of surrealist poets and painters, he matures his style; he tries to transpose surrealist poetry to the visual, based on memory, fantasy and the irrational. From this moment on, his style began an evolution that led him to more ethereal works, in which organic forms and figures were reduced to abstract dots, lines and spots of color. In 1924 he signed the first surrealist manifesto, although the evolution of his work, too complex, does not allow him to be ascribed to any particular orthodoxy. His third exhibition in Paris, in 1928, was his first great triumph: the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired two of his works. He returned to Spain in 1941, and that same year the museum dedicated a retrospective to him that would mean his definitive international consecration. During the fifties he experimented with other artistic media, such as engraving, lithography and ceramics. From 1956 until his death in 1983, he lived in Palma de Mallorca in a sort of internal exile, while his international fame grew. Throughout his life he received numerous awards, such as the Grand Prizes at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and the Guggenheim Foundation in 1959, the Carnegie Prize for Painting in 1966, the Gold Medals of the Generalitat de Catalunya (1978) and of the Fine Arts (1980), and was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the universities of Harvard and Barcelona. Today his work can be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, inaugurated in 1975, as well as in major contemporary art museums around the world, such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the National Gallery in Washington, the MNAM in Paris and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.