Joan Miró: L'Antitete: Le Désespéranto

Miró 1930s / Miró 1930s_2 / Miró 1940s / Miró L'Antitete / Miró 1950-53 / Miró 1953-56 / Miró 1956: Prevert / Miró 1957-60
Miró 1961 / Miró 1963 / Miró 1963-65 / Miró Flux (1964) / Miro Ubu Roi / Miró 1966-69 /
Miró Sans le Soleil / Miró Sans le Soleil 2 / Miró Sans le Soleil 3
Miró 1970-73 / Miró Lezard (1971) / Miró Beasts (1972) / Miró Lithographs (1972) / Miro 1974-79 / Miró Lithographe 2 1975
Miró Lapidari 1981

Heroic Poetry: Brinkman / Frankenthaler / Mitchell / Motherwell / Nevelson / Tàpies

After the liberation of France in 1944, Miro felt a new sense of hope. He visited the U.S., worked with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York, and, after returning to Paris in 1947, he joined into a collaboration with the poet Tristan Tzara, who had collected three volumes of his writings from various periods under the general title L'Antitête, and illustrated the third part, Le Désespéranto / The despairing one, with an astonishing set of etchings made from small shaped copper plates cut from a larger copper plate measuring 140x105mm (5-9/16x4-3/16 inches). The book was published in 1949 by Bordas in Paris in an edition of 200 exemplars, each of which was signed by author and the artists. The edition consisted of 8 copies on imperial japan paper containing the eight etchings, a suite of etchings heightened with watercolor, and one of the copperplates; 23 copies on Van Gelder Holland paper containing the eight etchings and a suite of etchings heightened with watercolor; and 169 copies on Auvergne Richard-de-Bas paper numbered from 32-200. None of the etchings were individually signed as part of the edition. So far as I have found, these are the only shaped etchings Miró ever made, and after looking at them, one can only wish he had made more.

For more information see Jacques Dupin, Miró Graveur I: 1928-1960 (Daniel Lelong Editeur, 1984), p. 70 and Patrick Cramer, Joan Miró: The Illustrated Books: Catalogue Raisonné (Geneva: Patrick Cramer, Publisher, 1989), p. 72. Both show only the color illustrations from the deluxe set as well as an additional set made from the plates after the cutout was printed separately with watercolor in the places left blank by the cutout. Cramer's explanation seems to be more complete than Dupin's, but in the following we give references to both works. We have a complete proof set of the eight unsigned etchings before hand-coloring via pochoir and four of the unsigned hand-colored etchings, all on Auvergne Richard-de-Bas paper; we also have one impression annotated "epreuve d'artiste" and signed in pencil by Miró; this one appears to be on a different paper. The text pages were printed on a sheet of hand-made paper measuring 275x221mm (10-13/16x8-11/16 inches) which was then folded twice so that each page measured measured c. 143x115mm. The first page of each of our groupings of eight pages was the etching, the verso was blank (for the edition, the sheet would have had to have been folded differently so that the pages would occur in the normal sequence; neither the etching nor its verso have page nubers). The following six pages contained text. Our set has not yet been cut on the top edges (which would normally be done only after binding). Each of the etchings, printed before the edition, have rich burr and are spectacularly good examples of Miró's skill as an etcher.