Joan Miró: Les Dernières Estampes (The Last Prints)

Softcover | 22 x 31.5 cm | 32 pp

Lelong Editions | 1987 | 9782855871523

Text in English, French, German and Spanish

These twenty prints are the last of Joan Mirő's original graphíc works. They were printed in Paris in 1981, the lithographs by René Lemoigne at gallery Lelong's workshop, the etchings by Robert Dutrou on the presses at the studio Morsang. Miró signed them in his studio at Son Abrines, Calamayor, where they were stored awaiting the settlement of his estate. 

The large forceful etching, La Marchande de couleurs, is in keeping with his big figures from the late sixties, etchings and aquatints strengthened by thick black reliefs obtained by using carborundum. In this baroque head one can find the same pictorial quality and the same vigorous brush stroke heightened by the counterpoint of pure colours.

Of the nineteen lithographs sharing the same dimensions, four stand out by their writing, mood, sensibility, and isolation of a figure in space. Four figures seemingly in response to each other pair by pair become a couple. Their titles attempt to restore a sense of echo and duplication: La Jalouse plays off Le Volage and La Jeteuse de sorts plays off Le Lanceur de couteaux.

The remaining fifteen lithographs constitute a series, both musical and playful, a mode as important to Miró as it is frequent in his ceuvre. In all of them, the impassioned black lines, dense and scattered, bring out figures that blend and intertwine. Their ardour, allegro vivace, is again activated by the rhythmic distribution of pure tones which set the entire space in motion. Ten of the fifteen are closely related, in pairs, using the same basic composition, the same black plate, each engendering a double chromatic variation. The entire series in its diversity and unity seems placed within an amorous struggle, and in the heat of a summer night.