JOAN MIRO
20th Century Artists
Bath
In the album ‘Le Lézard aux plumes d’or’ Miro combines the images
with a ‘free form poem’. Taking his inspiration from Mallarmé and
Apollinaire, Miró abolishes the distinction between calligraphy and
spontaneity. The title ‘Le Lézard aux plumes d’or’ evokes the ‘pompous
mythological metamorphosis’ of reptiles. Miro’s lizard lives surreal
adventures bringing the sun back into the sky whilst avoiding the
crescent moon contained within kabbalistic symbols.
JOAN MIRO
In his art ‘Joan Miró was a poet and magician, storyteller and seer’ - (Rosamond Bernier ‘Matisse, Picasso, Miró - As I Knew Them’). By the 1930’s when he first started making prints, Miró had already developed his distinctive lyrical style. The whimsical creatures - birds, stars or figures - that populated his paintings translated well to the medium of print. They are both carefully thought-out and free expressions of the subconscious. As Miró explained ‘For lithography and engraving, you must dominate chance, but never be dominated by it’. Later he described how he engraved the plates with a needle or phonographic needle in a totally automatic way, without any sort of control. He then made a print of this initial state and work on them with various procedures.
