Joan Miró, ‘UNTITLED from Le Lezard aux Plumes d’Or’, 1971, Christopher-Clark Fine Art

In 1967, Miró produced 18 color lithographs to accompany his poem Le lézard aux plumes d’or. These lithographs were to have been published in volumes illustrating the poem. Shortly after the printing of the plates, the artist and his publisher, Louis Broder, noticed that an error in the manufacturing of the paper had caused certain alterations in the colors. They therefore decided not to accept the printing of these volumes and to have them destroyed. Since the lithographic plates had already been erased, it was necessary for Miró to produce a whole new series of lithographs in order to complete this project. These new lithographs were drawn and published as originally intended in 1971 under the same title. This lithograph is from the second, later set.

Series: A superb impression of the definitive state, from the album edition of 195 (apart from the pencil-signed and numbered deluxe edition). One of fifteen color lithographs illustrating the text Le Lezard aux Plumes d’Or, a series of the artist’s own poems. Published by Louis Broder, Paris; printed at Atelier Fernand Mourlot, Paris.

Publisher: Louis Broder, Paris

Maeght 828; Cramer 148 XV.

About Joan Miró

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.

Spanish, 1893-1983, Barcelona, Spain, based in Paris and Catalonia, Spain