Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
"Le contre balancée", 1975.
Etching and aquatint, copy 50/50.
Signed and justified in pencil.
Publisher: Maeght, Paris.
Measurements: 115 x 74 cm (print); 138,5 x 96 cm (paper).

Miró frequently used the image of the eye in his works as a symbol that could represent inner vision, perception and observation of the world from a surrealist perspective. In this print he plays with the double and ambivalent image of an eye that is also a fish floating in space. The almond shape in thick black strokes is accompanied by the painter's characteristic red and blue. As in so many other works, in this composition Miró refers us to a primordial connection with nature, and more specifically with the marine world as a transcript of the psyche and immersion in the dream world.

Joan Miró was trained in Barcelona, and made his individual debut in 1918, in the Dalmau Galleries. In 1920 he moved to Paris and met Picasso, Raynal, Max Jacob, Tzara and the Dadaists. There, under the influence of surrealist poets and painters, he matures his style; he tries to transpose surrealist poetry to the visual, based on memory, fantasy and the irrational. His third exhibition in Paris, in 1928, was his first great triumph: the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired two of his works. He returned to Spain in 1941, and that same year the museum dedicated a retrospective to him that would be his definitive international consecration. Throughout his life he received numerous awards, such as the Grand Prizes of the Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Prize for Painting, the Gold Medals of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Fine Arts, and was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the universities of Harvard and Barcelona. His work can currently be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, as well as at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the National Gallery in Washington, the MNAM in Paris and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.