Colour lithograph, Joan Miró, Agora I, 1971

Description

Colour lithograph, Joan Miró, Agora I, 1971

Joan Miró, Agora I, 1971
Colour lithograph
Signed by the artist
Artwork dimensions  71/51
Framed

Lithographic exhibition poster for artists represented by Galerie Maeght at the Musée d’Art Moderne Strasbourg in 1971. A poster by Joan Miró, the Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist. The Surrealist master is one of the most important Spanish artists of the 20th century and one of the greatest artists of contemporary art.
“A painting is made from brushstrokes, just as a poem is made from words.”– Joan Miró

Miró’s works are interpreted as belonging to Surrealism, as an expression of a return to childhood, and as sandboxes for the subconscious. Miró’s style consists of vivid colours combined with simplified forms reminiscent of a young child’s drawings. Initially, Miró worked in various fashionable styles, such as Fauvism and Cubism. In 1920, he travelled to Paris several times, and settled there permanently the following year. He met Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and many other distinguished artists. In 1924, he joined the Surrealists around André Breton, but although he created under their influence, he remained on the fringes of the movement, retaining his position as an outsider.

Influenced by Surrealist poets and writers, he began to develop his own style: a map of weightlessly placed colourful signs and poetic forms that evoke both the seemingly naïve freshness of invention and the exuberant, Baroque spirit of Catalonia. The elements of his adopted style included organic forms and flattened drawing with sharp lines. Using symbols, fingerprints, hands, water on paper and seemingly delicate lines on fabric, the master transformed the world around him with striking simplicity. He created a reality full of poetic and dreamlike transformations.

His way of life was characterised by a strong need for cleanliness, order and discipline. The studio was immaculate, and the works were arranged according to a system known only to the artist. He grew up in Barcelona and spent part of his life in Paris. Although in 1956 the artist decided to move to Palma de Mallorca and Villa Son Abrines, his life continued to follow a Barcelona–Paris rhythm. The choice of Palma de Mallorca was not accidental either, as his wife, Pilar Juncosa, was born on this Mediterranean island.

The starting point for Mirò’s paintings is often the main patch of colour, from which the world emerges through the rigorous organisation of its irrational form. However spontaneous this work may appear, only the initial gesture was made freely; the rest was meticulously controlled according to Miró’s requirements for balance in the composition. By freeing his paintings from illusion and anecdote, Miró pushed simplification to its limits. He is credited with the painting technique grattage, which involves scraping paint from the canvas.

The work is in its original vintage condition.