JOAN MIRÓ

(1893-1983)

Sans titre

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Association pour la Défense de l'oeuvre de Joan Miró (ADOM).

Provenance
Eugenia Balkin 'Genia' Zadok Collection, New York (acquired directly from the artist in 1962); her estate sale, Sotheby's, New York, 7 October 1988, lot 188.
Gloria Gallery, Paris.
Private collection, Austria.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Literature
J. Dupin & A. Lelong Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné, Drawings, Vol. III, 1960–1972, Paris, 2012, no. 1726 (illustrated p. 61).


The present work is warmly dedicated to Genia Zadok, who received it directly from the artist shortly after its completion in 1962. Genia and her husband, Charles Zadok, emerged as significant collectors in mid-century America, a role shaped in no small part by Charles's professional life. As Vice President of Expansion for Gimbel Brothers, he helped steer the early growth of the American department store, bringing the same forward-looking sensibility to the couple's artistic pursuits. Their commitment to modern art would ultimately lead them to donate works by André Derain and Rufino Tamayo to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and to establish acquisition funds supporting the museum's ongoing engagement with Modern and Contemporary art. Charles further cemented his influence in the field by serving as a charter member of both the Museum of Modern Art's International Council and the Robert Lehman Art Foundation and Trust.

The Zadoks began their collecting with historical objects — chalices, tapestries and Gothic furnishings — before turning decisively toward Modern and Contemporary art. A pivotal moment came in 1940, when a so-called 'ferociously distorted' Picasso at the Milwaukee Art Institute provoked public uproar. Where many saw provocation, the Zadoks recognised innovation. From that point onward they championed and collected artists such as Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky, whose work, like that of the early modernists, pursued new ways of expressing intellect, emotion and spiritual intensity through form and colour.

Joan Miró's work fits seamlessly within this vision. His poetic abstraction and inventive orchestration of line and colour encapsulate the very principles that guided the Zadoks' collecting — the belief that the creative breakthroughs of their own time could stand alongside the great achievements of the past, and that art's deepest power lies in its ability to transfigure the visible into the deeply felt.