Joan MIRÓ (1893-1983) The music-hall act, 10/XI/1938... Lot 42

Joan MIRÓ (1893-1983) The music-hall act, 10/XI/1938 Gouache, colored highlights and pencil on cardboard Signed at the top ''Miró'' Annotated, titled and dated on the back 25.4 x 19.2 cm. Provenance : Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired from the artist) George E. Mercer, Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts (acquired from the artist in May 1939) Exhibitions : - New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, "Joan Miró, Paintings-Gouaches", April-May 1939 - Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art, "Twentieth Century Drawings from Massachusetts Collections July-September 1979 Bibliography: Catalog Raisonné, drawings, vol. II, no. 855 p. 39 In 1937, Miró fled to Paris from the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War. An existential and political crisis ensued, prompting him to distort anatomies and create mutated, deformed and distorted figures. His gouaches, watercolors and small paintings aim for "the most complete escape from all reality, to create a new reality with new characters and phantasmagorical beings, but full of life". The same year, at the request of Christian Zervos, Miró creates a stamp in support of Republican Spain, which is enlarged into a poster to raise funds. In June, he takes part in the "International Surrealist Exhibition" in Tokyo, organized by the magazine Mizué. In July, in Paris, Miró inaugurates the Spanish Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle with Sanchez, Gonzales, Picasso and Calder. In February 1938, Miró takes part in the "Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme" organized by André Breton at Wildenstein (set design by Marcel André Duchamp and Georges Hugnet). In September 1938, Miró completes 3 paintings for Pierre Matisse's children's bedroom. In October 1938, Miró escapes to the Music Hall. The year 1938 is marked by a series of enormous heads, inflated like balloons, flat as waffles, whose features (eye, nose, mouth) are reduced to the extreme, like a kind of Asian mask, reminiscent of the faces in Miró's early paintings. The characters become disquieting and nightmarish. At the same time, Miró continues to explore the cruel universe that haunts him. The deformations of characters and animals are more pronounced and marked. From time to time, in the course of his travels, he encounters moments of respite, joyous flashes of light, as in "Romantic Singer", "Woman with a Necklace" and "Girl Jumping a Rope". The Music Hall number is one of these moments of happy release. Miró confided to art critic Georges Charbonnier that "a canvas is a musical and poetic rhythm", and that he did not differentiate between the poet, the musician and the painter.