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Lot Essay
The present twelve drawings in pastel with etching are the preparatory maquettes for the coloured aquatints included in the book Lapidari, published by Aimé Maeght, Barcelona, in 1981.
The book includes a collection of 15th century texts about alchemy and the magic properties of precious and semi-precious stones. These anonymous Catalan manuscripts were discovered by the poet and prose writer Pere Gimferrer at a book fair in London. He became so fascinated by them that upon his return to Barcelona he asked Joan Miro to create a series of prints based on these late medieval, hermetic texts.
Miro interpreted the descriptions of the different stones, such as beryl, marcasite, sapphire and topaz, and their magical powers in elegant, highly abstract compositions of black lines and colour circles of varying intensity, size and tone. Sapphire for example is depicted as a bright blue pastel sphere, seemingly free-floating on the blank paper yet poised between the harsh, etched black lines. The text describes the stone as 'the colour of the clear sky which is found in the rivers of India. Its colour is azure and not transparent, possessing greater virtue for God above all the other stones.'
Throughout his long career, Miro maintained close friendships with writers and poets and frequently collaborated with them to create livres d'artiste. The extent of their cooperation was often such that the term illustration falls short to describe the close mutual relations between text and images.
The present series of twelve maquettes are the perfect example of the pared-down mature style of Miro - he was 86 years old when he completed the Lapidari.
The book includes a collection of 15th century texts about alchemy and the magic properties of precious and semi-precious stones. These anonymous Catalan manuscripts were discovered by the poet and prose writer Pere Gimferrer at a book fair in London. He became so fascinated by them that upon his return to Barcelona he asked Joan Miro to create a series of prints based on these late medieval, hermetic texts.
Miro interpreted the descriptions of the different stones, such as beryl, marcasite, sapphire and topaz, and their magical powers in elegant, highly abstract compositions of black lines and colour circles of varying intensity, size and tone. Sapphire for example is depicted as a bright blue pastel sphere, seemingly free-floating on the blank paper yet poised between the harsh, etched black lines. The text describes the stone as 'the colour of the clear sky which is found in the rivers of India. Its colour is azure and not transparent, possessing greater virtue for God above all the other stones.'
Throughout his long career, Miro maintained close friendships with writers and poets and frequently collaborated with them to create livres d'artiste. The extent of their cooperation was often such that the term illustration falls short to describe the close mutual relations between text and images.
The present series of twelve maquettes are the perfect example of the pared-down mature style of Miro - he was 86 years old when he completed the Lapidari.