Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
"Character with moon and star". Palma de Mallorca, 1968.
Marker pen on paper.
Signed, dated and located in the lower area.
Provenance: drawing made during the interview of the chess player and journalist Dimitrije Bjelica to Miró on December 15, 1968.
Bibliography: interview and drawing published in BJELICA, Dimitrije, "Putojem i Pitam" (I travel and I ask), Unireks 1996 (pp. 138-144).
Measurements: 15.5 x 21.2 cm; 41.5 x 48.5 cm (frame).

Made in Palma de Mallorca in December 1968, this drawing is a paradigmatic example of Joan Miró's plastic language at the height of his creative maturity. Executed in felt-tip pen with a continuous, firm and deliberately essential line, the work synthesizes some of the most emblematic motifs of Miró's universe: the anthropomorphic character, the crescent moon and the star.

The direct line, without nuances or visible corrections, accentuates the immediacy of the gesture and the economy of means that characterize his graphic production of these years. The central figure, of great expressiveness and extreme formal synthesis, is constructed through a spontaneous line that refers to surrealist automatism, a practice that Miró developed since the 1920s and that continued to be a fundamental axis of his poetics. The character, with his eyes wide open and his limbs wide open, seems to expand in space, establishing a direct dialogue with the cosmic symbols that accompany him.

The presence of the moon and the star refers to one of the constant conceptual axes in his work: the relationship between the human being and the cosmos.

The circumstance of its execution acquires special relevance. As it is a drawing made during an interview with Dimitrije Bjelica -famous chess journalist-, the work offers a direct window to the artist's mental process: an almost performative execution, where the subconscious guides the hand. It is not a composition meditated in the isolation of the studio, but an immediate creative gesture arising in the context of dialogue, testimony to the naturalness with which Miró integrated the act of drawing into his daily life.

Its signature, date and location, together with the publication documented in the aforementioned bibliography, reinforce its historical and collector interest. In Personaje con luna y estrella, Miró manages, through the maximum economy of means, to condense the essence of his imaginary: freedom, formal synthesis and an unwavering poetic vocation oriented towards infinity.

Internationally acclaimed following the retrospective that the MOMA in New York dedicated to him in 1941, Joan Miró has won awards such as the Grand Prizes of the Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Prize for Painting, the Gold Medals of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Fine Arts, etc. His work can currently be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, as well as in the main contemporary art museums around the world, such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the MOMA in New York, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the National Gallery in Washington, the MNAM in Paris and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.