Graphisme concret (Concrete Graphics), 1951

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York Albert White Gallery, Toronto Canadian Corporate Collection

Jacques Dupin, “Miró”, Barcelona, 1993, page 294

“The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness.” ‒ Joan Miró In the early 1950s, Miró created a large series of quickly executed drawings, giving each the title “Graphisme concret (Concrete Graphics)”. Usually done in pencil with black india ink on paper and sometimes heightened with a primary colour, each work is composed of a simplification of lines, shapes and forms that appear elsewhere in the artist’s oeuvre. With Miró’s larger works, there is a deliberate choice of form, colour and line guided by the artist to create his compositions. However, with these smaller studies on paper, he injects a sense of spontaneity as he captures shapes and forms that float and dance across the sheet yet are still grounded within the composition. As Jacques Dupin states, "[The forms] are always related to Miró's vocabulary of signs and the other elements of his language, but they are spontaneous; they are not "worked-up" emanations of this language, but a deliberate simplification of it. Hence their expressive power is all the greater; their energy has been caught at the source and let go at once, the sign being the condensed vehicle of a subterranean energy that otherwise would be dispersed and lost." Pierre Matisse was Miró’s exclusive dealer in North America from his first solo exhibition with the gallery in 1932 until his death in 1983. He was also his representative internationally. Interestingly, the Pierre Matisse Gallery would present more shows featuring Miró than any other artist they represented.