Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
"L'enragé".
Etching, aquatint and carborundum, copy 73/75.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Attached invoices issued by the Maeght Gallery (Paris).
Measurements: 89.5 x 61 cm; 102 x 75 cm (frame).

Miró passionately explored the material possibilities of engraving. "L'enragé" combines etching, aquatint and carborundum. Thus, Miró worked the plate fusing three procedures: the agile stroke of etching, the glazes that model the enveloping atmosphere in aquatint and the subtle reliefs of black ink, in carborundum, providing grain and an almost pictorial effect. This gives the print visual relief, with impastoed areas that combine with sparks of pure color and empty spaces full of energy.

In the center rises a totemic form delineated by thick black gestures that refer to surrealist automatism. A fiery crimson circle and another abyssal oval in gray?black function as eyes that give the character an almost zoomorphic power. Small geometric modules (green, blue, red?orange and a yellow glow) provide playful counterpoints and underline the chromatic dynamism. Unmistakable Mironian signs gravitate on the paper: the asterisk star, curved lines, telluric scribbles evoking constellations, insects or roots. The result is a cosmic field where the rational and the instinctive are balanced.

The title "L'enragé" suggests an unleashed energy that, far from the literal violence to which the word alludes, is transformed into a creative impetus. The dense black acts as primary matter, while the primary colors burst forth like flashes of life that fight the darkness. The work thus participates in the Miró dialectic between the original chaos and the playful light of the imagination.

Produced in his mature period, this print testifies to the renewal that Miró brought to contemporary engraving, placing it in the field of material experimentation comparable to painting. The editions of 75 copies reinforce its rarity and its desired presence in public and private collections.

Joan Miró was 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 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. This lithograph shows us the most essentialist Miró in his search for minimal and suggestive forms. The ranges limited to a few colors applied on flat and shiny surfaces, combine to evoke the lyrical communion of man and the environment.