Louise & Edgar Varèse Collection (acquired from the artist)
Sale: Butterfields, San Francisco, March 27, 1991, lot 4177
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné. Paintings, 1959-1968, vol. IV, Paris, 2002, no. 1054, illustrated p. 47

Painting is generally in very good condition. It has probably never been cleaned or varnished and there is no damage or paint loss to the picture proper. The tacking edges of the canvas have been reinforced and the canvas has subsequently been re-stretched. The structural adjustment seems to have been well carried out. The delicate paint layer throughout seems to be very healthy. There are some small retouches, particularly on the extreme left and right edges. The top and bottom edges are mostly unrestored, except in the lower right corner. The paint layer should not be cleaned but some of the retouches should be adjusted to perhaps blend them slightly more effectively with the surrounding color. Overall the painting is in a very good state. The above condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Miró's luminous Hommage à Edgar Varèse II is a work of great creative achievement. Edgar Varèse (1883-1965), was an innovative, avant-garde French-born composer whose music features an emphasis on timbre and rhythm. He was the inventor of the term 'organized sound', a phrase meaning that certain timbres and rhythms can be grouped together, sublimating into a whole new definition of music.  Similarly innovative in painterly terms, the present work, executed in 1959, presents a mix of poetic lyricism, radical abstraction, and semiotic complexity that was groundbreaking among the avant-garde during this period. In Miró's most successful work, such as Hommage à Edgar Varèse II, his remarkable visual vocabulary strikes a perfect balance between abstraction and image-signs. There is always energy and movement in these pictures and never a sense of stasis. Moreover, each work is the result of active ongoing improvisation that renders a precise interpretation impossible.

When Miró painted the present work in 1959, he had become acquainted with the new techniques and aesthetic agenda of the Abstract Expressionists. He first saw their work in New York in 1947, and the experience, the artist would later recall, was like "a blow to the solar plexus." Several young painters, including Jackson Pollock, were crediting Miró as the inspiration for their wild, paint-splattered canvases. Miró was both flattered and a bit awed by the acknowledgement, not knowing immediately what to think of it. But in the years that followed he created works that responded to the enthusiasm of this younger generation of American painters and the spontaneity of their art. The paintings he created in the 1950s are a fascinating response to these new trends of abstraction, but also they show Miró's allegiance to his own artistic pursuits. "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" (quoted in Margit Rowell, Joan Miró, Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1986, p. 207).