
Joan Miró
L'ASTRE DU LABYRINTHE, 1967
In 1938, the Surrealist Joan Miró met the master printer Louis Marcoussis and quickly became …

Etching with drypoint, aquatint and carborundum in colours on Mandeure paper. Printed by Arte …

Joan Miró rejected the constraints of traditional painting, creating works “conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness,” as he once said. Widely considered one of the leading Surrealists, though never officially part of the group, Miró pioneered a wandering linear style of Automatism—a method of “random” drawing that attempted to express the inner workings of the human psyche. Miró used color and form in a symbolic rather than literal manner, his intricate compositions combining abstract elements with recurring motifs like birds, eyes, and the moon. “I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music,” he said. While he prized artistic freedom, Miró revered art history, basing a series of works on the Dutch Baroque interiors of Hendrick Sorgh and Jan Steen. In turn, Miró has inspired many artists—significantly Arshile Gorky, whose bold linear abstractions proved a foundational influence on Abstract Expressionism.

In 1938, the Surrealist Joan Miró met the master printer Louis Marcoussis and quickly became enamored by etching, an intaglio technique of incising a design onto a metal plate. When travel pulled Miró away from Marcoussis’s studio, he sent him letters about his budding interests in the medium. “My dear friend,” he …

Etching with drypoint, aquatint and carborundum in colours on Mandeure paper. Printed by Arte Adrien Maeght, Paris, published by Maeght, Paris. Sheet size 41 x 28.125 in. Image size 36.375 x 23 in. Edition of 75. Framed. Dupin 425. Additional images available upon request. Certificate of authenticity included. …

Joan Miró rejected the constraints of traditional painting, creating works “conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness,” as he once said. Widely considered one of the leading Surrealists, though never officially part of the group, Miró pioneered a wandering linear style of Automatism—a method of “random” drawing that attempted to express the inner workings of the human psyche. Miró used color and form in a symbolic rather than literal manner, his intricate compositions combining abstract elements with recurring motifs like birds, eyes, and the moon. “I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music,” he said. While he prized artistic freedom, Miró revered art history, basing a series of works on the Dutch Baroque interiors of Hendrick Sorgh and Jan Steen. In turn, Miró has inspired many artists—significantly Arshile Gorky, whose bold linear abstractions proved a foundational influence on Abstract Expressionism.