Joan Miró (1893-1983) Plate 2 From Quelques fleurs pour des amis (Some Flowers for Friends) 1964 Color Lithograph on Paper 12.5"x16" unframed Edition 208/225. Signed lower right and edition lower left. Good vintage condition with slight discoloration in the upper corners. From the estate of Edyth and Phillip Bassett. Joan Miró was born in Spain in 1893 to a family of craftsmen, and displayed a penchant for art and creation at a young age. Miró once famously stated, "I want to assassinate painting." Along with other Dada and Surrealist artists like Jean Arp and Yves Tanguy, he explored the possibility of creating an entirely new visual vocabulary for art that could exist outside of the objective world, while not divorced from it. His unique artistic idiom often used biomorphic forms that remained within the bounds of objectivity, while simultaneously being forms of pure invention. Expressive and imbued with meaning through their juxtaposition with other forms and the artist's use of color, they became increasingly abstract pictorial signs. His explorations of all media and innovative techniques gave his work an edge - simultaneously, new, yet instantly recognizable as Miró. What art critic Ryan Steadman called Miró's "personal form of abstraction" was a defining influence on his longtime close friend Alexander Calder and on the Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Helen Frankenthaler. A large exhibition of his works was held at the Gallerie Maeght in Paris and subsequently at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York in 1953. However, from 1954-58 he worked almost exclusively on printmaking and ceramics, including two ceramic wall murals for the UNESCO building in Paris. In 1959, he, along with Salvador Dalí, Enrique Tabara, and Eugenio Granell participated in Homage to Surrealism, an exhibition in Spain organized by André Breton. His work is held in major modern art museums around the globe, most notably the Tate Modern in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. View The Legends of Modern Art Collection & Read the Bassett Family Story
