Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
"Le Termite".
Aquatint engraving on Arches paper, copy 29/30.
Signed and justified in pencil.
Certificate on the back.
Work referenced in "Miró Engraver, vol. IV 1976 - 1983", Galerie Lelong: France, 2001, Jacques Dupin. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 1014 on pg. 69.
Measurements: 20.7 x 34.5 cm (print); 50.5 x 66.5 cm (paper); 94 x 77 cm (frame).

Joan Miró developed in his language a characteristic atmosphere, impregnated with primary impulses left over from his contacts with Dadaism and Surrealism. Thus, his engravings function as microcosms, symbolic models of the world that seek the understanding of the universe through the coexistence between atavistic impulses and artistic space, full of cultural reminiscences. Thus, his works should be considered as an expression of his sense of life, which is concretized plastically through the symbolism that he himself confers to the representation of certain beings and objects. By turning objects into symbols, Miró breaks with the historical-narrative aspect, perspective and other traditional and realistic aspects of painting, leaving aside the description of reality.

Joan Miró was trained in Barcelona, and made his individual debut in 1918, in 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.