Although never an official member of the Surrealist group, Miró imbued his brushstrokes with a spontaneity similar to the automatism favored by André Breton. These lines formed a defining feature of Miró’s work and in the present composition they can also be linked with the rise of Abstract Expressionism (see fig. 1). Miró first became acquainted with the Abstract Expressionists while visiting Alexander Calder, Yves Tanguy and Marcel Duchamp in New York in 1947. Several of the painters from this movement credited Miró as their stylistic inspiration. Miró, in turn, was profoundly moved by their technique and aesthetic beliefs.

In 1959, Miró made his second trip to the United States to attend the opening of his retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. This renewed contact with his artistic colleagues and the full flowering and triumphant success of Abstract Expressionism came at a crucial moment in the artist’s career. He had not painted since 1955, instead focusing on printmaking and ceramics, yet his visit provided a new juncture which allowed him to resume painting upon his return to Europe.

The robust, freewheeling, improvisatory handling in Miró’s painting during the 1960s (see fig. 2) - often exploiting splatters, drips, and stains among swirling, gestural masses of paint - display increasing gestural boldness and innovative techniques in his handling of pigments. As a result, the artist reclaimed his language of pictorial signs, in marked contrast to the more refined, precisely linear shapes characteristic of his work during the Second World War and the immediate post-war period.

The spontaneity and improvisational attitude towards the application of paint can be detected in the present work, which was begun with a ground of dripped paint. As explained by the artist, “this method of dripping is fairly recent. I pour paint on the canvas, which is lying flat on the floor, and then I stand the painting up. The color then runs down. I check the flow. When it seems right, I lay the canvas flat on the floor again. I am doing this more and more” (Miró quoted in a 1974 interview with Yvon Tallandier, op.cit., p. 285). In Femme, oiseaux, étoile II, Miró has applied heavy strokes of black paint over the white grounds in more controlled and deliberate gestures, in which the images of the woman and bird are reduced to their essential linear aspect.

The artist traveled to the United States where he came into direct contact with Abstract Expressionist art. Consequently, his work from the 1950s onwards responded to the enthusiasm and innovations in painterly expression generated by the Abstract Expressionist movement. The spontaneous application of paint in the present work presents a dynamic and textured backdrop upon which Miró’s forms sit. While the Abstract Expressionist movement was clearly a driving force, for Miró, however, form could never be entirely abstract. Compositions such as Femme, oiseaux, étoile II, remain rooted in the representational: “For me a form is never something abstract; it is always a sign of something. It is always a man, a bird, or something else. For me painting is never form for form's sake” (Miró quoted in Margit Rowell, Joan Miró, Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1992, p. 207).

Miró had been long aware, moreover, of the affinities in his work with Japanese painting and decorative arts; his first journey to Japan in 1966 profoundly influenced and extended his artistic vocabulary, becoming a catalyst for his valedictory production in graphic media, sculpture, and ceramics. The terseness of his poems and picture titles reflected the succinctly imagist haiku form in Japanese verse. Watching artists at work in ancient, traditional styles piqued Miró’s interest in employing the brush as a calligraphic tool.

As explained by Jacques Dupin, the close friend and author of the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work, the theme of the woman, bird and stars provides “one of the keys to Miró’s cosmic imagination: it expounds the conflict between the earthly and aerial elements and, in the dialogue between the woman and the bird, renders the precariousness of the balance achieved between them... Nothing is heavy or stabilized in this poetic stylisation of woman in the process of metamorphosis between fixity and volatility. The analogy between the two creatures, and the interlacing of their lines are somet.mes s so strong that it is hard to say where the woman ends and the bird begins, whether they do not after all form one marvelous hybrid creature... This suspended union...takes place in the privileged space of carnal night, in an intimacy of nature, which Miró has never departed from. Reality is revealed as a sort of break in the smooth flowing of t.mes ” (Jacques Dupin, Miró: Life and Work, London, 1962, p. 485).