Painting (Figures with Stars)

1933

Joan Miró
Spanish, 1893–1983

The “personages” we see here—organic figures with tiny heads, disjointed appendages, and schematic breasts—reflect the experimentation across media for which Joan Miró is best known. First in his Barcelona studio in 1933, the artist made a series of small paper collages from precisely rendered engravings of household and mechanical objects. Then, he translated these compositions into large abstract paintings, with multicolored, amorphous forms rendered in silhouette. Inspired by this series, Miró derived Paintings (Figures with Stars) as a cartoon, or full-scale preparatory work, for a tapestry commissioned by French art collector and gallery director Marie Cuttoli, effecting yet another material transformation of his original design from collage to painting to textile.

Status: On View, Gallery 398
Department: Modern Art

Artist: Joan Miró
Title: Painting (Figures with Stars)
Place: Spain (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1933
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed on verso, c.: "Joan Miró"
Dimensions: 198.1 × 246.4 cm (78 × 97 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice E. Culberg
Reference Number: 1952.512
Copyright: © 2018 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

William S. Lieberman, “Modern French Tapestries,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, vol. 6, no. 5 (Jan. 1948), pp. 142-43.
Possibly Joan Miró, exh. cat. (New York: Pierre Matisse Gallery, 1952), cat. 1.
Possibly Howard Devree, “Extending Horizons: Kirchner and Expressionism—Joan Miró—Cézanne Exhibition a Great Success,” New York Times (April 20, 1952), p. X9.
Possibly James Fitzsimmons, “All Sorts of Wonderful Events,” Art Digest 26, 15 (May 1, 1952), p. 16.
Possibly Charles Z. Offin, “Gallery Previews in New York,” Pictures on Exhibit 14, 7 (May 1952), p. 15 (ill.).
Il Messaggero di Roma (July 22, 1952), ill.
Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly, 46, 4 (November 15, 1952), p. 68 (ill.).
“Culberg’s Contemporaries,” Life (October 27, 1952), p. 481 (color ill.).
Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), p. 314.
Jacques Dupin, Miró, trans. Norbert Guterman (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1962), pp. 255-56, 529 (ill. 367).
A. James Speyer, “Twentieth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture,” Apollo 84, 55 (September 1966), p. 225.
Instituto de arte de Chicago: Presentación de Charles C. Cunningham (Buenos Aires: Editorial Codex, S.A., 1967), pp. 15, no. 73 (ill.), 79 (color ill.).
Louise Averill Svendsen, “Composition, 1933,” The Evelyn Sharp Collection (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1978), p. 52.
A. James Speyer and Courtney Graham Donnell, Twentieth Century European Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 56, no. 2G8.
Carolyn Lanchner, Joan Miró, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1993), cat. 112 (color ill.).
Thomas Buser, Experiencing Art Around Us (Minneapolis/St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1995), p. 106, fig. 4-25 (color ill.).
William Fleming, Arts & Ideas, 9th ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1995), pp. 609-10, pl. 21.6 (color ill.).
Werner Spies, La Révolution Surrealiste, exh. cat. (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2002), 229 (color ill.), 439.

Possibly New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Joan Miró, Apr. 15-May 17, 1952, cat. 1, as Painting.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Joan Miró, Oct. 17, 1993-Jan. 11, 1994, cat. 112.
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, La Revolution Surrealiste, Feb. 27– June 24, 2002, no cat. no.; traveled to: Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfahlen, July 20–Nov. 24, 2002, as Personnages avec étoiles.
South Kensington, Victoria and Albert Museum, Surreal Things: Design and Decorative Arts, Mar. 29, 2007—July 22, 2007; Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Oct. 2007 1—Jan. 1, 2008.
Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago, Oct. 6, 2013–Feb. 16, 2014, no cat. no.
Philadelphia, The Barnes Foundation, Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray, Feb. 23, 2020–May 10, 2020.

The artist; commissioned by Marie Cuttoli, Paris, 1933 [commissioned as a tapestry design to be executed by a workshop in Aubusson, France for sale in her Paris gallery; New York 1993, London 2007]; returned to the artist for re-touching, by Dec. 14, 1951 [letter from Aimé Maeght to Pierre Matisse, Dec. 14, 1951, Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives, The Morgan Library & Museum; letter from Pierre Matisse to Courtney Donnell, Oct. 26, 1976; copies in curatorial object file]; sold to Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, by Mar. 1952 [Aimé Maeght facilitated this sale, according to letter from Aimé Maeght to Pierre Matisse, Feb. 15, 1952, Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives, The Morgan Library & Museum; copy in curatorial file]; sold to Mr. and Mrs. Maurice E. Culberg, Chicago, by Oct. 27, 1952 [“Culberg’s Contemporaries,” 1952]; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1952.

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