he Smile of the Flamboyant Wings, 1953 is the first in a series of similarly impulsive paintings. Some even feature Miro's handprints - a pleading gesture for which he derived his inspiration from pre-historic cave drawings. The use of materials and gestures became increasingly important factors in Miro's works. For a while he devoted himself exclusively to ceramics and developed some new techniques together with Artigas. It was with great energy that Miro subsequently took up painting again in 1960. With his new large-format paintings he picked up the thread of his series of pictures of 1953/54, while at the same time developing them further in the direction of poetic sensitivity.