Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
"Bon à tirer - Barb II". 14.12.1982.
Etching and carborundum engraving on Japanese pearlescent paper.
Bon à tirer copy, prior to the edition of 25 copies on japanese paper.
Stamped signature, handwritten justification in the lower left corner by the publisher Joan Barbará: "Assaig definitiu d'estampillament. Al dors, segell on s'inserta la signatura d'Emili F. Miró, constatant l'autenticitat". Authentication certificate stamp on the back by Sucesión Miró, Emili Fernández Miró.
Work catalogued in Jacques Dupin's "Miró engraver IV", p. 179, fig. 1222.
Observations: engraving not adhered to the frame, held by corner pieces.
Measurements: 22 x 17.5 cm (print); 65 x 50 cm (paper); 78.5 x 58.5 cm (frame).
Miró did not stop creating until the end, as this engraving, which he made months before his death, shows. In his last years, Miró devoted himself intensively to printmaking techniques. Here we see one of his allegorical characters, in which he maintains his characteristic and contracted tonalities of his particular dreamlike universe.
Joan Miró trained in Barcelona and made his individual 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 the surrealist poets and painters, he gradually matured his style; he tried to transpose surrealist poetry into visual art, 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 devoted a retrospective exhibition to him which was to be his definitive international consecration. Throughout his life he received numerous awards, such as the Grand Prizes at the Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim Foundation in Venice, the Carnegie Prize for Painting in Venice, the Gold Medals of the Generalitat de Catalunya and of the Fine Arts, and was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Harvard and Barcelona. His work can currently be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, 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.