The Constellations are a series of 23 paintings on paper produced from January 1940 to September 1941 by the Spanish surrealist Joan Miró. Art historians and museum curators have said of the paintings: "Universally considered one of the greatest achievements of his career",Tone, Lilian (1993). The Journey of Miró's Constellations. MoMA,15 (Autumn, 1993): 1-6 pp. "The Constellations, as a group and singly, are among the miracles that art occasionally bestows",Lanchner, Carolyn (1993), Joan Miró (including Anne Umland, Chronology 317-361 pp.; Lilian Tone, Catalogue 363-436 pp.). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 484 pp. "masterpiece of world painting",Orozco, Miguel (2018) The True Story of Joan Miró and his Constellations. 261 pp. (accessed January 27, 2021) "perhaps the most intricate, most elaborately developed of all Miró's compositions",Lassaigne, Jacques (1963) Miró: Biographical and Critical Study. The Taste of Our Time, Vol. 39. Editions d'Art Albert Skira. Geneva 143 pp. [see chapter on The Constellations Signs in the Heavens, 80-96 pp.] "genuine masterpieces",Diehl, Gaston (1979) Miró. Crown Publishers, Inc. New York.. 95 pp. "one of the most brilliant episodes of his career",Penrose, Roland (1969), Miró. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers. New York, New York. 215 pp. [see chapter 4: War and Isolation: The Constellations. 100-111 pp.] and "As an optical experience the Constellations are entirely unprecedented, having no forerunners even in Miró's own work".Rubin, William S. (1968) Dada and Surrealist Art. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York. 525 pp.

"In sum, given that music, nature, and life itself are the artist's sources of inspiration";Rowell, Margit (1970) Miró. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York. 184 pp. [see chapter 5 The Constellations 16-18 pp.] the paintings boldly celebrate nocturnal themes of wonder, joy, nature, love, and escape, although they were painted during one of the most troubled periods of the artist life. Initiated only months after the violence and chaos of the Spanish Civil War in his homeland while Miró was exiled in France; and later completed after retreating back to an uncertain reception in fascist Spain, as the Nazis invaded France. Exhibiting the paintings in fascist Spain or occupied France were not viable options, so the series was discreetly exported to the US in 1944 and first exhibited in New York City at the closing of the Second World War in 1945. The exhibition appeared as a revelation to an apprehensive, exiled faction of the European avant-garde and intellectuals as the first indication concerning the status of art in Europe during World War II. André Breton wrote that it was "the note of wild defiance of the hunter expressed by the grouse's love song" At the same time they were a direct influence on an emerging generation of abstract expressionist artists, particularly Jackson Pollock and the "all-over" aesthetic.

History Creation Traditional accounts indicate that Joan Miró was dividing his time between Paris and his homeland, in Montroig and Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain in the early 1930s. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he remained in Paris in self-exile with his wife Pilar and daughter Dolores (b. 1931). Although Miró was not demonstratively political, on the occasion of the 1937 International Exhibition (World's Fair) in Paris, he accepted a commission for a mural from the Spanish Republic. Miró produced an 18 by 12 foot (550 x 365 cm.) painting titled The Reaper (1937, now destroyed or lost) which was exhibited at the Spanish Pavilion with Picasso's Guernica, and hence, publicly signifying his Republican sentiments in a high-profile forum that received considerable attention.Hammond, Paul (2000), Constellations of Miró, Breton. City Lights Books, San Francisco, California. 255 pp. However, one author suggest his more recent research shows Miró, due to economic limitations, was actually living in Catalonia full time from 1933 to the outbreak of the civil war in 1936. Coming from a relatively prosperous, property owning family, Miró was at great risk from the leftwing communist, anarchist, and republican militias (his brother-in-law was shot by a firing squad), and that his acceptance to paint a mural for the Spanish Republic's Pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition was in fact a debt he owed the republican factions for granting him safe passage into France in 1936. On 1 April 1939 Franco proclaimed victory in Madrid, political tensions continued to grow throughout Europe, and war seem inevitable. Anticipating conflict, many artist began to withdrawal from Paris, Piet Mondrian moved to London as early as September 1938 (and later New York),Jaffé, Hans L. C. (1970) Mondrian. The Library of Great Painters. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York. 164 pp. and Breton, Chagall, Dalí, Duchamp, Ernst, Leger, Masson, Matta, Man Ray, and Tanguy among many others made their way to New York and other points of refuge in 1939 and 1940.

In August 1939, Miró moved his family to Varengeville-sur-Mer on the coast of Normandy, where he rented a cottage "Le Clos des Sansonnets" on the Route de l'Eglise. Miró had previously visited Varengeville where his friend, architect Paul Nelson owned a cottage. Georges Braque, an old friend and now his neighbor, had built a house in Varengeville nearly a decade before and spent several months there each year.Cogniat, Raymond (1980). Braque. The Library of Great Painters. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York. 168 pp. Jacques Lassaigne stated Varengeville was "once a rallying point of the Surrealists", where Ardré Breton had conceived his seminal surrealist noval Nadja. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro had also painted the scenic region decades before. Wassily Kandinsky visited Miró and Braque in late 1939. Despite conflicts elsewhere, the pastoral environment was conducive to work. Miró often produced work in series, and in Varengeville, he first painted a group of oil paintings on burlap on the theme of The Flight of a Bird over the Plain. The first of the Constellations, Sunrise was completed, signed, and dated January 21, 1940.

At Varengeville-sur-Mer in 1939, began a new stage in my work which had its source in music and nature. It was about the time that the war broke out. I felt a deep desire to escape. I closed myself within myself purposely. The night, music, and the stars began to play a major role in suggesting my paintings. Music had always appealed to me, and now music in this period began to take the role poetry had played in the early twenties — especially Bach and Mozart when I went back to Majorca upon the fall of France. — Joan Miró 1948Sweeney, James Johnson (1948) Joan Miró: Comment and Interview. Partisan Review. 15(2) : 206-212 pp. (accessed January 24, 2021)

Miró maintained a regular correspondence with his art dealer Pierre Matisse in New York, writing: "I've entirely resumed my regular life and am very satisfied with my work" (September 15, 1939); " I am now doing very elaborate paintings and feel I have reached a high degree of poetry - a product of the concentration made possible by the life we are living here." (January 12, 1940); "I am still working on the little paintings I hope I will be able to maintain the necessary spiritual tension until the end of the series. This long stay in the country has done me a world of good, this solitude has greatly enriched me." (April 14, 1940); "The countryside is marvelous here now: the apple trees are beginning to flower and the light is very soft" (May 2, 1940).

Miró completed the tenth and last of the Constellations that he painted in France, the Acrobatic Dancers on 14 May 1940. The situation rapidly deteriorated as the Nazis overran the Low Countries earlier that month and were soon bombing Normandy. The family fled in haste leaving possessions behind, Pilar holding daughter Dolores by the hand, and Miró with a portfolio including ten Constellations and the blank sheets of paper that he hoped to finish the series on under his arm. They made their way to Dieppe, Rouen, and Paris for a few days, where he briefly considered going to the US with Josep Lluís Sert before boarding a train south, joining a massive exodus southward. By June 1 they were near the Spanish border in Perpignan, France. After a week in Perpignan, they obtained a Spanish visa. A letter to Matisse from June 6, 1940, states:

Our journey up to now has been full of anxieties and unforeseen events, but we are now safe and sound....I've decided to return home. I think that this is the wisest thing to do at the moment to safeguard Pilar and the little one....I know that this entails very great sacrifices on my part, but I cannot allow my little family to remain in the midst of a tempest. We are thinking of leaving on the 8th.... I do not know what will await me upon arrival. — Joan Miró 1940

Fearing Miró might be on a fascist blacklist (in fact he was not), they surreptitiously moved through Catalonia for a few weeks, where conflict and fallout from the civil war still lingered, with leftist prisoners in the hundreds of thousands and food shortages, fuel shortages, black-marketing, corruption, prostitution, and epidemics were all rampant in the bomb-scarred cities and towns. On the advice and with aid of Joan Prats, they took a boat to Palma, Majorca (Mallorca) in the Balearic Islands in late July 1940, where Pilar Miró's parents lived, and tensions were lower. For a time he used his mother's maiden name, Ferrà, and his wife Pilar conducted the correspondence with Pierre Matisse in New York to avoid detection. After a hiatus of three and half months, on 4 September 1940 he completed The Nightingale's Song at Midnight and Morning Rain, in Palma de Majorca, the first Constellation painted in Spain, and the 11th in the series.

As I lived on the outskirts of Palma I used to spend hours looking at the sea. Poetry and music both were now all-important me in my isolation. After lunch each day I would go to the cathedral to listen to the organ rehearsal. I would sit there in that empty gothic interior daydreaming, conjuring up forms. The light poured into the gloom through the stained-glass windows in an orange flame. the cathedral seemed always empty at those hours. The organ music and the light filtering through the stained-glass windows to the interior gloom suggested forms to me. I saw practically no one all those months. But I was enormously enriched during this period of solitude. I read all the time: St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa, and poetry — Mallarmé, Rimbaud. It was an ascetic existence: only work. — Joan Miró 1948

Miró lived on Majorca for about a year and painted ten of the Constellations there. As tensions eased in Spain he began to visit Catalonia and eventually returned to Mont-roig del Camp to live. The final three paintings in the series were completed there, the last being The Passage of the Divine Bird on September 12, 1941. In November 1941 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held simultaneous retrospectives for Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí. The catalogue for the Miró retrospective by James Johnson Sweeney, covering the years 1917–1939, was the first monograph on the artist.Sweeney, James Johnson (1941) Joan Miró. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 87 pp. After the Constellations were finished, due in part to scarcity of materials, Miró produced several drawings and small paintings, often works on paper in a looser approach. In 1944 he made his first ceramics and published a series of 50 lithographs known as the Barcelona Series.

Exhibitions