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The deeper layers of Modern & Contemporary Art, brought to you by {name}

Silvia Possanza

Joan Miró (Barcelona, 1893 – Palma, 1983).

"La Rame et la Roue".

Lithography.

Épreuve d'Artiste.

1960.

38 x 27,5 cm.

CONDITON: Good condition.

PROVENANCE: Pierre Bergé et associés.

PUBLISHED:

- VVAA. 1975. "Miró Litógrafo II (1953-1963). Catálogo razonado de las litografías".  París. Ed. Maeght. Nº 205.
- CAZELLES, R. 1960. "La Rame et la roue". París. Ed. Jean Hugues.

DESCRIPTION:

Lithograph by Joan Miró for the frontispiece of the book La Rame et la Roue by poet René Cazelles (Jean Hugues, Paris, 1960). The book edition consists of 25 copies with the same lithograph in three states, numbered from 1 to 25, plus 50 copies with the lithograph in its final state, numbered from 26 to 75, plus 300 copies of the regular edition, numbered from 76 to 375. In this case, it is the lithograph in its final state, signed by hand and marked E.A. (épreuve d'artiste, artist's proof); it would therefore be an additional copy reserved for the artist himself, printed independently of the book edition.

La Rame et la Roue (The Oar and the Wheel) brings together fourteen poems by René Cazelles, preceded by a prologue by the same author. Cazelles probably met Miró through the poet and playwright René Char, a friend of both and a member of the Surrealist circles in Paris during the 1930s. The three shared a fascination with the relationship between the real and the desired, which is only possible through imagination, art or poetry.  

Within Miró's graphic work, which is of great importance in his artistic output, it is worth highlighting the works he produced illustrating the prose and poetry of friends and writers he admired. The artist began working in this genre in 1928 with eight pochoirs created for Il était une petite pie by Lise Hirtz, with whom he would work again decades later. He also produced engravings and lithographs to illustrate texts about his own work (Je travaille comme un jardinier, 1964, and L'enfance d'Ubu, 1975), as well as collaborating with magazines, such as the Cahiers d'Art monograph dedicated to his work in 1935. However, his work as an illustrator of other people's writings is particularly interesting, as it reveals Miró's artistic and aesthetic interests beyond the visual arts, as well as his artistic reflections on the subject. 

It is noteworthy, for example, to discover that most of his work as an illustrator accompanies poetic works. One of his first readings was Apollinaire's Calligrammes, published in 1914; before leaving for Paris in 1920, Miró was already familiar with Dadaism through its influence in Barcelona's intellectual circles. Once in the French capital, the young painter discovered the liberation of painting through poetry through his encounters with André Masson, Antonin Artaud and Tristan Tzara, among others. In his quest to fuse poetry and painting, Miró became a painter-poet in Paris. It is therefore not surprising that throughout his career he collaborated by illustrating works by great names in French and Spanish-American poetry such as René Char, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Rafael Alberti, Tristan Tzara, Joan Brossa, Pablo Neruda and even St. Francis of Assisi (‘Càntic del Sol’, 1975). 

Joan Miró (Barcelona, 1893 – Palma, 1983) was one of the most important figures in 20th-century Western art. He developed a personal style close to surrealism that had a powerful influence on both his contemporaries and subsequent generations. From his formative years at the La Llotja School and the innovative Galí Academy, Miró became involved with the avant-garde circles of Barcelona, where he met some of his great friends: the critic Sebastià Gasch, the poet J. V. Foix, the painter Llorens Artigas and the art dealer Joan Prats. In 1918, he held his first exhibition at the Galerías Dalmau in Barcelona, and two years later he moved to Paris, where he would spend the most crucial years of his artistic career, developing his own visual language. 

In the French capital, Miró became friends with André Masson, around whom the so-called Rue Blomet group gathered, the future nucleus of Surrealism. Under the influence of the Surrealist poets and painters, with whom he shared many of his theoretical ideas, the young Miró matured his style, seeking to transpose Surrealist poetry into the visual realm and drawing on memory, fantasy and the irrational to do so. His style then began to evolve towards increasingly ethereal works, where organic forms and figures were reduced to abstract dots, lines and patches of colour. In 1924, he signed the first Surrealist manifesto, although the evolution of his work, which was too complex, did not allow him to be ascribed to any particular orthodoxy. His third exhibition in Paris, in 1928, marked his first major triumph: the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired two of his works. From the following decade onwards, Miró established himself as one of the most prominent figures on the international art scene. 

It was precisely at this point that the artist, a non-conformist by nature, entered a phase he called the ‘murder of painting’, in which he voluntarily renounced being a painter and experimented with other media, such as collage, drawing on papers of different textures, and the construction of ‘objects’ with found elements, his first approach to sculpture. Thus, although he soon returned to painting, Miró never abandoned his desire to experiment with all kinds of materials and techniques. He returned to Spain in 1941, and that same year the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated a retrospective to him, which marked his definitive international recognition. From 1956 until his death in 1983, he lived in Palma in a kind of internal exile, while his international fame grew. 

Miró received important awards such as the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and from the Guggenheim Foundation in 1959, the Carnegie Prize for Painting in 1966 and the Gold Medals of the Generalitat of Catalonia (1978) and Fine Arts (1980). Today, his work can be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, which opened in 1975, as well as at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the MNCARS in Madrid, the MoMA in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, the MNAM in Paris and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, among other collections.

Hand signed - 1960

Joan Miro (1893-1983) - La Rame et la Roue

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