Joan Miro, Numbers and constellations of love for a woman, 1941 Constellations series

Numbers and Constellations of Love for a Woman (1941) belongs to Joan Miró’s celebrated Constellations series, a group of works created during his exile from war-torn Europe. Painted between 1940 and 1941, these pieces embody a luminous, meditative response to global chaos—small universes of harmony, delicacy, and poetic complexity. This particular work intertwines Miró’s symbolic language of stars, figures, and floating signs with a deeply personal theme: the presence of a beloved woman imagined through cosmic metaphors.

The composition unfolds like a nocturnal sky filled with rhythmic markings. Fine black lines weave across the surface, creating a lattice of interconnected forms that feel both fragile and infinite. These lines form slender figures, starbursts, swirling curves, and tiny numerical symbols—each element delicately balanced, as if suspended in weightless space. The figures seem to dance or drift, subtly anthropomorphic yet fully integrated into the celestial patterning that surrounds them.

The inclusion of “numbers” introduces a sense of coded intimacy, as though Miró were writing a private message hidden within the constellations. They function not mathematically but poetically—signs of order, rhythm, or secret meaning, enhancing the sense of a personal universe constructed for a woman he loved.

The background is typically a soft, subtly textured field—pale, luminous, and atmospheric—against which the black lines and small bursts of color stand out with quiet intensity. Bright dots of red, yellow, blue, or green punctuate the surface like stars or sparks of emotion, giving the work a musical cadence.

Numbers and Constellations of Love for a Woman is gentle yet intricate, intimate yet cosmic. It reflects Miró’s ability to transform longing, memory, and affection into a celestial poem—an entire sky reimagined as an expression of love.