Joan Miró (1893-1983), the Catalan artist of biomorphic paintings, prints and sculptures, and Alexander Calder, the American maker of kinetic sculptures, stabiles, and jewelry, met in Paris in 1928 when Calder visited Miró’s studio. They saw in each other’s work influences drawn from the subconscious, from symbolism and a thematic interest in astrology. They immediately forged a transatlantic friendship that saw both artists through the upheavals of World War II and lasted until Calder’s death in 1976.

Miró’s life was upended when fascists under Franco occupied Catalonia in 1939, then brought a coup against the Spanish Republic. The artist fled Barcelona with his family, first to Northern France, then to Paris, then to Perpignan, Barcelona and later to rural Catalonia. While living in exile, Miró began a series of small works on paper, which were later called “Constellations.”

He wrote,  “When I was painting the Constellations, I had the genuine feeling that I was working in secret, but it was a liberation for me in that I ceased thinking about the tragedy all around me.” Right: Joan Miró, Vers l’arc-en-ciel (Toward the Rainbow), March 11, 1941. Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. © 2016 Successió Miró / ARS, New York / ADAGP Paris

In 1942, 22 of the 23 paintings were smuggled out of Spain with the help of MoMA, which had given Miró his first museum retrospective in 1941. Displayed in New York by Pierre Matisse Gallery three years later, the paintings, in which the artist’s signature forms were dispersed in an “all over” style that critics believe influenced the young Jackson Pollock, caused a sensation. Left: Alexander Calder in his Roxbury studio, 1941. Photo credit: Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, NY © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2014

Meanwhile, in his Connecticut studio, Calder began a series of still sculptures made of wood when the aluminum he customarily used for his mobiles was commandeered by the military. A group of these were displayed in 1943, also at Pierre Matisse Gallery, where they were suspended from the ceiling or attached overhead to a wall. When a critic noted their “starry sharpness and clarity,” Calder labeled them “Constellations.”

Although the artists had worked separately, with no knowledge of one another’s work, their output from the war years is linked by a mutual concern for the human spirit to prevail. The two bodies of work were eventually presented at MoMA in the 1993 retrospective of Miró’s work. Info

Now returned to the city 25 years later through the extraordinary efforts of Alexander Rower, a grandson of Alexander Clader, and Joan Punyet Miró, a grandson of Joan Miró, who met in New York in 1995 and have been friends ever since, the works are on view at the galleries that represent the estates of the artists.

Calder/Miró: Constellations. Jointly presented by Aquavella Galleries (through May 26^th), 18 East 79^th Street, NY, NY Info and Pace Gallery through June 20), 32 East 57^th Street, NY, NY Info

A boxed three-volume set, organized by Aquavella Galleries in collaboration with the Pace Gallery, will be available in June.

The Miró volume features essays by Joan Punyet Miró, Margit Rowell, and Andre Breton’s prose poems created in homage to Miró’s Constellations.

The Calder volume features texts by Alexander Rower and Milly Glimcher.

The third volume includes an extensive chronology and correspondence between the two artists. Info