In the late 1920s, Miró’s work underwent a radical shift. He began to question the practice of painting and sought new forms of expression. Jacques Dupin has described the artist’s movement in style as a transition “from object to sign, from figurative space to imaginary space, from descriptive realism to a visionary, fantastic art” (exh. cat., op. cit., 1986,p. 33). With a self-declared objective to “assassinate painting,” Miró’s work in this period was dominated by assemblages, collages of various materials, and an in-depth exploration into the possibilities of drawing.

Miró described an almost visceral engagement with drawing and the immediacy he felt with the various media employed for works on paper: “I often work with my fingers; I feel the need to dive into the physical reality of the ink, the pigment, I have to get smeared with it from head to foot. A virginal piece of paper becomes exactly like this old newspaper” (ibid., p. 51). Following the path of this immediacy, Miró’s creations on paper allowed his imagination free rein in the production of pictorial signs that would dance across the surface in pencil, ink, collage, gouache and oil. According to James Johnson Sweeney, his experimentation in 1933 was “the direct source of his best work of the following year, such as his The Blue Star [the present work], and his large pastel The Lovers. During 1934, this calligraphic emphasis continued to dominate Miró’s work in all media with a constantly growing force and assurance. It is as if Miró through the aid of surrealism had at this point uncovered certain atavistic leanings for the decorative virtues of oriental running line, previously lost sight of with so many other associations of his Catalan boyhood” (exh. cat., op. cit., 1941, p. 60).

In the winter and spring of 1934, Miró began working with new supports such as sheets of colored paper and sandpaper and experimenting with different media like a powdered version of pastel applied with a brush. The many combinations offered by these materials inspired the artist to adapt his style. The juxtaposition of various textures and media introduced a tension that is only resolved and made rhythmic through the flexible, graphic interplay of the forms, as present in Sans titre. The smoothly applied gouache creates flat planes of pure, saturated color that bounce off of the colored paper board. “His explorations of new materials were not so much that, as a kind of encouragement to them to show him their possibilities; he has always had the gift of making materials speak, and speak, more over a new though always neutral language” (J. Dupin, Miró, Paris, 2012, p. 182).