JOAN MIRÓ. Derrière le miroir (DLM), No 186, containing 2 original color lithographs, one of which as cover, and 6 color lithographs after, including two double-sided, 1970.

Approx 38x28 cm The pioneering and influential Derrière le Miroir was founded in 1946 by Aimé Maeght, who had opened his art gallery the year before. 253 editions were published - the last in 1982 - and the mix of poetry and lyrics by e.g. Apollinaire, Breton, Jouhandeau, Ponge along with lithographic illustrations of Maeght's artists (Alechinsky, Bacon, Bazaine, Braque, Calder, Chagall, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Matisse, Miró, Tapies, to name a few) made it an instant collector's item.

MIRÓ The surrealist master Joan Miró is one of Spain's most important 20th century artists and one of the greatest in Catalan art. He transformed the world around him with a clear simplicity, be it with a symbol, traces of a finger, a hand, water on paper, a seemingly fragile line on the canvas or paper. He conjured up a world full of poetic and dreamlike transformations.

Miró's private life is almost ridiculously simple and everyday. During his upbringing in Barcelona, he stayed away from the fermenting bohemian circles and later in Paris he stayed out of the more subversive and raucous activities that his surrealist friends engaged in. His way of life had an inordinate need for cleanliness, order and order. Neatness itself ruled in the studio where the works of art were neatly arranged according to a system known only to the artist.
Although the artist chose to move from Paris to Palma de Mallorca and Villa Son Abrines with a large studio in 1956, he was tied to Barcelona and the Catalan crowd throughout his life. Allied with each other, they gave each other vitality and fame. However, the choice of Palma de Mallorca was not so strange as the wife Pilar Juncosa was born on this Mediterranean island. Often the starting point for a painting is a randomly added spot of color from which the image emerges under strict organization of its irrational form. However spontaneous an image may seem, only the first element has arisen freely, the rest is meticulously controlled in accordance with Miró's demand for balance in the composition. By freeing his images from illusions and anecdotes, Miró has reached the ultimate limit of simplification.

"The painting arises from the brushstrokes as a poem arises from the words." Joan Miró LITERATURE: Mourlot 671-672, Cramer 134.