On June 19 at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art evening sale, a new benchmark was set when Joan Miró’s 1927 modern masterpiece “Peinture (Étoile Bleue)” sold for $36,946,396, exceeding the estimate of $23.7/31.6 million, shattering the previous record for the artist at auction and representing the highest price for a work of art sold in London thus far this year.

“Peinture (Étoile Bleue)” is among the most important works by Miró and a painting that the artist himself identified as key to his oeuvre. It formerly belonged to André Lefevre, a leading collector and connoisseur of early Twentieth Century art.

Set upon a field of magnetically charged azure, Miró’s “Peinture (Étoile Bleue)” belongs to the artist’s seminal “dream paintings” cycle, examples of which can be found in major international museums. Characterized by the same, luscious blue palette that was later to influence artists such as Mark Rothko and Yves Klein, this cycle marks the key moment of the artist’s engagement with the Surrealist movement. In the dream paintings cycle, Miró developed the symbolism that was to inform his work for the rest of his career.

The sale realized a total of $117,680,965.

A complete review will appear in an upcoming issue. ⁗D