Joan Miró

(Barcelona, 1893 – Palma de Mallorca, 1983)

Oda to Joan Miró III

1973

Folder "Oda a Joan Miró" with texts by Joan Brossa

lithograph on paper (H.C.)

103.9 x 76.8 cm

Inv. no. P00439

BBVA Collection Spain



Joan Miró is one of the true innovators of twentieth-century art. Hard to classify in a single artistic style, he was the creator of an entirely personal language through which he offered a new vision of reality.

At the age of eighteen he decided to devote himself to painting, in a climate dominated by the latest French artistic trends, thus initiating a great body of work based on an equilibrium between expression and experimentation, synthesising
and
and combining the real with an abstraction coming from his contact with Surrealism, in which he was an active participant, and was later to develop into
.

Engraving acquired particular relevance throughout his career. Printing allowed Miró to expand his visual experimentation into form, gesture, and colour. His inventiveness and experimentation with new materials afforded many new approaches in the process of engraving that added further expressiveness to the work. The end results were undoubtedly those of a master who broke away from academic conventions yet without reneging on tradition.

This work is part of the series Oda a Joan Miró comprising nine lithographs made in 1973 and printed by Polígrafa, in which the artist illustrated poems by his good friend Joan Brossa, who he had met in the forties through Josep Vicenç Foix. The piece is an interesting example of Miró’s engraving, evincing his mastery in this field. Evoking
cut-outs, the forceful central figure seems to levitate against a black background peopled by the signature iconographic elements of the artist’s cosmic universe, like circular forms or the star.

In the words of Brossa, Miró’s contribution to his visual poetry was like a kind of music that flowed in parallel, yet keeping its distance and maintaining the independence of both expressions.