Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ (Barcelona, 1893–Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
“The Stone Circle,” 1971.
Lithograph on paper. Copy X/XXV.
It has a 2-cm tear on the right margin and visible foxing spots on the reverse.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Measurements: 57 x 45 cm.
Created in 1971, “The Stone Circle” embodies that personal artistic language in which figuration dissolves into a repertoire of symbols and spontaneous gestures, capable of simultaneously evoking the natural world, the cosmic universe, and the imagination.
The work is linked to a poetic publishing project spearheaded by the Cuban writer, journalist, and art critic Carlos Franqui, in which literary creation and contemporary printmaking establish a direct dialogue. One of the most interesting aspects of this work is precisely the context in which it was created. The Stone Circle was not conceived as an isolated print, but rather as part of an ambitious artistic and literary collaboration published in Milan in 1971 by Grafica Uno, under the direction of printer and publisher Giorgio Upiglio. The project brought together fifteen original lithographs by internationally renowned artists, including Alexander Calder, Antoni Tàpies, Wifredo Lam, Asger Jorn, Valerio Adami, and Joan Miró, accompanied by Carlos Franqui’s poem and a musical recording by Luigi Nono titled *And Then He Understood*. On a visual level, the composition reveals some of the most recognizable features of Miró’s late work. A blue organic form, with energetic black outlines, dominates the scene and suggests an anthropomorphic presence, somewhere between a figure and a symbol. Around it, the chromatic elements and gestural interventions seem to respond to a logic of free associations, closer to poetry than to descriptive representation. The star or sun, together with the patches and splashes of greenish hues, introduces a cosmic and natural dimension that broadens the scope of the image’s interpretation.
Joan Miró trained at the Escuela de la Lonja and the Academia Galí in Barcelona. After moving to Paris in 1920, he came into contact with the leading European avant-garde movements and developed a personal artistic language, linked to Surrealism, characterized by fantasy, gestural freedom, and a universe of signs and organic forms. Considered one of the great innovators of 20th-century art, he received major international awards, including the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale (1954) and the Guggenheim Award (1959). His body of work, which encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, lithography, and ceramics, is represented in prominent public and private collections around the world, such as the MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, which opened in 1975.