Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ (Barcelona, 1893 – Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
“La Médusante,” from the People of the Sea series, 1981.
Color aquatint, drypoint, and carborundum on Rives paper. Edition 16/60.
Signed with a stamp in the lower right corner and numbered in pencil in the lower left corner.
Reference: Dupin, no. 1283.
Measurements: 68.2 × 54 cm (print); 96 × 75 cm (sheet); 104.5 × 78.5 × 4 cm (frame).

In “La Médusante,” Miró plays with a deliberate ambiguity between a sea creature, a totemic figure, and a hypnotic presence. The title, which can be translated as “the fascinating one” or “the one who mesmerizes,” connects to the oceanic imagery of *People of the Sea*, but also to the idea of an image that captures the gaze. The large, central black mass—compact and silent—functions as a body or mask, while the organic appendages extending upward suggest tentacles, antennae, or underwater currents.

Carborundum introduces a material density that is particularly visible in the black areas, giving the engraving an almost tactile presence. The work does not depict a figure, but rather evokes one through signs: a powerful silhouette, spots, dots, and suspended chromatic forms. In it, Miró transforms the marine world into an enigmatic apparition, somewhere between the playful and the unsettling, true to the poetic freedom of his late period.

Joan Miró trained in Barcelona, where he held his first solo exhibition in 1918 at the Dalmau Galleries. In 1920, he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with the Surrealist circle and developed his own artistic language based on free association, memory, and the irrational. International recognition came quickly: in 1928, the MoMA in New York acquired works by him, and in 1941 it dedicated a major retrospective to him.

Throughout his career, he received major honors, including awards at the Venice Biennale and from the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as the Gold Medals for Fine Arts and from the Government of Catalonia. His work is now held in leading institutions such as the Joan Miró Foundation (Barcelona), MoMA (New York), the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), the National Gallery of Art (Washington), and the Centre Pompidou (Paris).