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Joan Miro
One of the 20th century's most well-known, distinctive, and powerful artists, Joan Miro responded to a dazzling range of stimuli throughout his long, creative life. His work celebrated everything from Egyptian pyramids to New York skyscrapers, Dutch painters such as Vermeer to the night sky, the voluptuous architecture of fellow Barcelonan Antonio Gaudi to cave paintings and petroglyphs. It was music and especially literature, however, that were at the heart of Miro's sensibility as a picture-maker.
1947 was the first year in which Miro created the multicolor etchings and lithographs for which he is reowned. Although he had been making original prints since the late 1920's, especially in coordination with writers and as part of various Surrealist projects, it was after World War II that he turned to the graphic media in earnest. This return to printmaking engaged Miro's imagination until his death, and produced a body of intricate, innovative graphics which always reflected a restless search for different methods of composition and differing visual content.
Miro's printmaking embodies the evolution of his thinking every bit as much as his paintings. As could be expected, the prints bring to the foreground his graphic concerns-the line, the writing, the disposition of forms, the elucidation of his personal iconography. A Miro print, whether from 1947 or 1981, speaks, sings, and dances with the same verve as his paintings.
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