Joan Miró

Private collects ion (acquired directly from the artist and sold: Replica Shoes 's, New York, November 13, 1997, lot 478)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Executed on heavy cream laid paper affixed to a mount at center of side edges and along top edge. Sheet is bubbling slightly towards center and just below center of work. Colors are bright and fresh. Work is in excellent condition.
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In 1976, Miró designed an aquatint and six colored etchings with aquatint to accompany the celebrated poem El Pi de Formentor, written in 1907 by the Catalonian poet Miguel Costa i Llobera, in a limited edition portfolio published by Sala Gaspar of Barcelona. The present work, entitled Composition, is executed on one of the original text pages from this portfolio, of which only 50 were printed, and contains the fifth and sixth stanzas of Costa i Llobera's eight stanza ode to a native pine tree of Majorca's spectacular Formentor peninsula. Printed in Catalan, the text appearing here translates as:

Sublime tree! of genius the living sign and wonder,
Superb above the mountains he scans the infinite:
His form fond heaven embraces, though harsh the earth thereunder;
And in that love he welcomes the lightning and the thunder
           For glory and delight.

Oh, when through all the heavens the tempests rage uproarious,
And seems that to the surges down must his peak be hurled,
High o'er the billows' clamour he sings with laughter glorious,
And rears above the cloud wrack his regal head victorious,
          Triumphant o'er the world.

Miró once stated, "I make no distinction between poetry and painting" (quoted in Georges Duthuit, "Ou allez-vous Miró?", Cahiers d'Art, nos. 8-10, Paris, 1936, p. 263). In Composition, Miró illuminates Miguel Costa i Llobera's words with the distinctively bold, spontaneous interplay of line and color which he had refined throughout the 1970s. By fluidly intermingling graphics and text, Miró surpasses traditional modes of illustration and creates an interpretive visual dialogue between art and poetry. "He wished to merge the poetry of his paintings with the writings of poets. He wanted to find their common ground, their indivisible root, and he also sought to exceed the limits of his art, to go beyond painting" (Jacques Dupin, Miró, Paris, 2004, p. 407).

This ideology inspired Miró to collaborate with a multitude of great poets throughout his career, yet few examples seem as successful as Composition. The tempestuous dynamics and vaguely arboreal forms of this work provide an emotional translation of El Pi de Formentor that transcends the boundaries of language.