Lost Joan Miró Drawings Reemerge At Auction

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Newly Discovered Joan Miró Works Found in Nice Will Head to Auction in Antibes This April

A routine apartment visit in Nice has turned into a significant Miró discovery: three previously unknown works on paper by Catalan painter Joan Miró (1893–1983) are set to go under the hammer on the French Riviera this spring.

The find began when auctioneer Guillaume Mermoz, of the house Métayer-Mermoz, visited the home of Edmond Vernassa, a multidisciplinary artist and industrial designer who moved within the Riviera's mid-century modernist circles. Among Vernassa's possessions, Mermoz spotted a double-sided work on paper titled“Le Soleil Mallorca” (1972), a lively image associated with tourism promotion for the Spanish island in the 1970s. The sheet features one of Miró's oval sun-parrots, encircled by black dot“stars,” a compact constellation of the artist's late vocabulary.

The discovery raised an obvious question: if one Miró had surfaced, could there be more? Vernassa's heirs believed additional material might exist and searched his studio. There, they uncovered an old poster tube that had apparently remained sealed for decades. Inside were two large-scale drawings, each roughly nine feet long, conceived as designs for indoor balcony railings. The sheets are packed with sweeping lines and constellation-like shapes, translating Miró's graphic language into an architectural register.

“It had not been opened for decades and had been passed down by Vernassa to his descendants,” Mermoz said in an email.“As soon as the lines on the page appeared, all doubt disappeared. It immediately became clear that these were two major works, instantly recognizable through the distinctive hand of Miró.”

Métayer-Mermoz will offer the three works in Antibes on April 19. Each of the two railing designs carries an estimate of €200,000 to €400,000 (approximately $231,000–$463,000). The smaller“Le Soleil Mallorca” is estimated at €30,000 to €50,000 (about $35,000–$58,000). Ahead of the sale, the works will be exhibited in Paris during Drawing Week, which runs from March 25 through 30.

While Miró is well known for ambitious commissions in public and architectural settings during the 1960s and 1970s, the newly surfaced railing designs point to a less typical corner of that practice. In those decades, the artist frequently developed monumental projects by sketching on large sheets of paper to test structure and scale. Notable examples include a wall at UNESCO headquarters in Paris and a ceramic mosaic on the Palacio de Congresos in Madrid. Designing elements of interior architecture, however, was far less common.

In this case, the patrons appear to have been decisive. The railings were made for the Paris apartment balcony of Aimé and Marguerite Maeght, key figures in the postwar art ecosystem of the Riviera. The Maeghts helped shape the region's modern art scene in the second half of the 20th century and founded the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the mid-1960s, a hub where artists including Miró, Marc Chagall, and Alexander Calder circulated and exchanged ideas.

Vernassa's role was practical as well as social. He ran a plastics workshop and was known for an affinity for plexiglass. According to the auction house, he was given the drawings in order to execute the commission, and the pinholes from their former display on his studio wall remain visible - small physical traces that reinforce the works' working-life provenance.

“This particularly dynamic artistic context - where artists, dealers, collectors, and workshops intersected - helps explain Vernassa's presence within their circle and these drawings are remarkable both for their scale and provenance,” Mermoz said.

The April 19 sale in Antibes will also include other modern and contemporary works, among them a sculpture made of compressed cans by César Baldaccini, estimated at €12,000 to €18,000 (about $14,000–$21,000), and a painting of a dancer by Chinese-French artist Lanlan, estimated at €25,000 to €35,000 (about $29,000–$40,000).

For collectors and Miró scholars alike, the appearance of these sheets underscores how discoveries can still emerge from private studios and family holdings - and how the Riviera's dense network of artists, patrons, and fabricators continues to shape what surfaces, and when.

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