Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ (Barcelona, 1893 – Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
“Chanteur des rues IV,” 1981.
Etching and aquatint on paper. Copy XV/XX.
Accompanied by a certificate issued by the Joan Miró Foundation.
Work reproduced in Dupin, no. 1139.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Measurements: 37 x 28 cm (print); 56.5 x 42.5 cm (paper).
*Chanteur des rues IV* belongs to the final phase of Joan Miró’s printmaking career, during which the artist consolidated a fully mature visual language characterized by formal freedom, spontaneous gesture, and the symbolic power of color. The work is part of the Chanteur des rues series (also known as Street Singer), a collection of prints created in collaboration with Parisian workshops and published in a limited edition around the 1980s.
In this series, Miró develops an iconographic universe in which schematic figures, floating signs, and seemingly improvised compositions evoke poetic scenes reminiscent of the world of dreams and imagination. The title “Street Singer” suggests a connection to the popular and the everyday, reinterpreted through a deeply lyrical and surrealist lens, where reality is transformed into a language of free signs.
Joan Miró trained in Barcelona and held his first solo exhibition 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, his style began to mature; he sought to transpose Surrealist poetry into the visual realm, drawing on memory, fantasy, and the irrational. His third exhibition in Paris, in 1928, marked his first major success: 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, which cemented his international reputation. Throughout his life, he received numerous awards, including the Grand Prizes at the Venice Biennale and from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Prize for Painting, the Gold Medals from the Government of Catalonia and the Fine Arts Academy, and he was awarded honorary doctorates by Harvard University and the University of Barcelona. Today, his works can be viewed at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, as well as at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, 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.