Joan Miro (1893-1983) - À Toute Épreuve

JOAN MIRO'
À Toute Épreuve 1958
Color woodcut on BFK paper (with watermark)
Sheet 52 x 38 cm, with full margins.
Edition of 125

Hand-signed bottom right and numbered bottom left 41/125

Printed by Fequet y Baudier, Paris.
Published by Gérald Cramer, Geneva and Galerie Berggruen, Paris
Certificate by Rosa María Malet of the Fundació Miró (Barcelona)

Literature:
This impression is fully documented and referenced in the official Catalogue Raisonné.
Jaques Dupin - Miró Engraver, Vol I. 1928-1960, listed and illustrated no. 235 on p. 154.

Historical description:

“À toute épreuve” is one of the most famous artist’s books of the 20th century: a project born of friendship, driven by an unlimited ambition and completed with a patience that inspired the admiration of all who witnessed it.

It all began in 1929, when Paul Éluard wrote these poems in the pain of a double loss: Gala, his wife, leaves him to join Salvador Dalí, and Nusch, whom he begins to love, enters his life. These surreal texts — fragments, proverbs, lyrical flashes — were published in 1930 by Éditions surréalistes. It was in 1947, during an encounter with the Geneva publisher Gérald Cramer, that the project to place them in dialogue with Miró's work was born.

Miró undertook the project with a fervor that surprised everyone. In 1948 he wrote to Cramer: “I am completely absorbed in this sacred book; I hope to create something sensational, the most important thing we have done in wood engraving since Gauguin.” Inspired by Gauguin’s engravings and by Japanese prints, he deliberately chose this ancient and demanding medium, carved 233 wood blocks and subjected the work to 42,000 impressions at the Lacourière workshops in Paris. The work would last eleven years. Éluard, who died in 1952, never saw the finished book.

What Miró achieved here goes beyond traditional illustration. He does not read the poems to translate them, but inhabits them, focusing on the space the words occupy, their visual rhythm, their tension on the page. The woodcut becomes sculpture, color becomes language, and the book becomes a total object where two poetics — Éluard’s and Miró’s — dive into one another without merging.

This color woodcut on BFK Rives paper, numbered and hand-signed by Miró, belongs to the independent series published parallel to the original book for collectors. Referenced as Dupin 235, it possesses all the density of a work that Riva Castleman, historian of printmaking, described as “one of the most original and beautiful books of the century.”

This work embodies the spirit and thematic elements of all the combined works. Using a dark gray block with a wood-grain texture in the background, bold tones of red and green overlay the rectangle in a uniform and translucent layer.
The bright edges of the red circle and the green shape leap from the page with vitality, while the overlaid areas recede in space with the darker tone provided by the gray background.
Looking like a brilliant red sunset over a bright green meadow, there are infinite possibilities for the meaning behind this work. Miró demonstrates his ability to break the barriers and limits of printmaking with this piece, showing us a uniquely his art with a joy in illustrating poetry.