Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
"El devorador de cabras" 1981.
Etching with aquatint, carborundum and drypoint on BFK Rives paper, copy 14/60.
Signed with stamp and numbered in pencil.
Certified on the back by Mr. Emilio Fernández Miró, grandson of the artist, with stamp of the Miró Estate.
Catalogued in "Miró Engraver-Jacques Dupin". Vol.IV, pg 201, figure 1276.
Work belonging to the series "Characters of the sea", last series of engravings that the artist made, published by order of the Miró Succession in 1990.
Measurements: 68,2 x 54 cm.(print); 96 x 75 cm.(sheet). 116 x 96 cm (frame).

This work is part of the last series of engravings that Miró made, Characters of the sea, in which the artist retakes his most essential imaginary to synthesize it in elemental figures of great symbolic load. In the engraving, an essential figure with a black silhouette can be distinguished. Its body, compact and dark, is united by a red circle: a frequent Miró symbol that can be read as a heart, vital energy or generating nucleus. The large eye, disproportionate, imposes itself as a sign of vigilance or instinctive power, while a vertical blue line, similar to a stick or cane, reinforces the active gesture of the figure. Behind, a green stain or shape suggests an organic, vegetal space or a shadow that provides a chromatic counterpoint.

The character seems a mythical or archaic entity, a metaphor of the vital and destructive impulse, very present in Miró's late iconography, where the figures become more essential and aggressive, but also cosmic.

Miró combines aquatint, carborundum and drypoint in this engraving, achieving a surface rich in textures: aquatint defines the flat areas of color and glaze; carborundum brings relief and material density to the central black, while drypoint insinuates lines of energy and direction. The whole oscillates between figure and abstraction, with a tension between the gestural and the symbolic.

Internationally acclaimed following the retrospective that the MOMA in New York dedicated to him in 1941, Joan Miró has received 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, etc. His work can currently be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, as well as in the main contemporary art museums around the world, such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza, 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.