Joan Miro (1893 - 1983), Composition IX 1972

Workshop lithograph reflected on limestone, BFK Rives velin paper, 31 x 49 cm in light passe - partout; framed 44 x 62 cm.
Publisher: Maeght Gallery; Printed by Atelier Mourlot.
References: Katalog raisonne, Maeght Editeur,1981 vol.I p.189
Mourlot catalog: 865
Cramer catalog "Joan Miró. The Illustrated Books" Geneva 1989 item 160.
Composition created by Miro in 1972 specifically for a book by Michel Leiris - author of the first of six volumes of a monumental study of Joan Miró's work and is one of eleven lithographs for Leiris' text.


Michel Leiris (1901-1990) - French writer and ethnologist. Initially associated with a group of Surrealists, including Max Jacob, Anré Masson and Pablo Picasso. Co-founder (with Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois and Jules Monnerot) of the Collège de Sociologie. In 1931-1933, he participated in a research expedition to Africa, after which he wrote a monumental treatise on inner experience, L'Afrique fantôme (1934). Between 1929 and 1935, he underwent psychoanalysis, resulting in the writing of his famous intimate biography The Age of Man (1939) and its sequel La règle du jeu (1948-1975). He taught at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, and after World War II became a proponent of existentialism according to Jean-Paul Sartre.