Joan Miró

(Barcelona, 1893 – Palma de Mallorca, 1983)

Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas en el jardín de Miró (VII) (Wonders with Acrostic Variations in the Garden of Miró (VII))

1975

Folder Maravillas acrósticas en el jardín de Miró

Lithograph on paper (50/75)

53 x 74.5 cm

Inv. no. 36020

BBVA Collection Spain



Throughout his long-standing career, one of Joan Miró’s main goals was to create a fusion of painting and poetry. A book lover from a very early age, he always had a profound passion for the word, rendered in his work in many compositions whose marks seem to conjure up a kind of abstract calligraphy.

His interest in poetry led to countless collaborations with great writers whose books Miró illustrated. That is the case of Wonders with Acrostic Variations in the Garden of Miró, published in 1975, a collection of poems Rafael Alberti had dedicated to Miró and for which the artist created twenty lithographs.

In iconographic terms, this body of work can be divided into two large groups representing two different styles: one comprises thirteen works, in which a number of non-figurative characters, highly characteristic of Miró’s imagery, are surrounded by stars and spheres floating in the background; the other is made up by seven pieces created with forceful brushstrokes recreating lines drawn with a pencil, brushwork with Indian ink and wash. This lithograph belongs to that second group. In it, Miró transcribed Alberti’s words, turning them into an animated abstraction whose elements have been totally simplified. Without renouncing his signature colours of yellow, green, blue, red and black, he created an image of light forms that seem to dance freely around the space, a feature openly acknowledging the influence in his work of Eastern culture, which he discovered on his travels to Japan a decade earlier. This influence is particularly notable in the gesturality of the drawing, which also recalls American abstraction, a key inspiration in the artistic experimentation of his early days.

Wonders with Acrostic Variations in the Garden of Miró prefigures the spontaneity the artist’s oeuvre would reach in his final years, when, free from any ties, he achieved his highest creative freedom.