Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
"Chanteur des Rues IV (Street Singer)", 1981.
Aquatint engraving, copy 12/80.
Signed and justified.
Measurements: 37 x 28 cm (print); 56,5 x 42,5 cm (paper).

The title "Chanteur des rues" ("Street Singer") suggests a human figure in the act of singing. Miró often took elements from everyday life and transformed them into abstract and poetic forms.

Joan Miró trained in Barcelona, and made his solo debut in 1918, at the Dalmau Galleries. In 1920 he moved to Paris and met Picasso, Raynal, Max Jacob, Tzara and the Dadaists. There, under the influence of surrealist poets and painters, he matures his style; he tries to transpose surrealist poetry to the visual, based on memory, fantasy and the irrational. His third exhibition in Paris, in 1928, was his first great triumph: the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired two of his works. He returned to Spain in 1941, and that same year the museum dedicated a retrospective to him that would be his definitive international consecration. Throughout his life he received numerous awards, such as the Grand Prizes of the Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Prize for Painting, the Gold Medals of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Fine Arts, and was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the universities of Harvard and Barcelona. His work can currently be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, as well as at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the National Gallery in Washington, the MNAM in Paris and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.