Album 21 - Plate 1, 1978 by Joan Miró

Album 21 - Plate 1, 1978 by Joan Miró

Album 21 - Plate 1, 1978; Lithograph in colors on Arches; Signed by Miró in pencil lower right and numbered 24/75 in pencil lower left; Published by Maeght Editeur, Paris; Size - Sheet 19 1/2" x 25 1/2"; Frame: 34 1/2" x 39"; Catalog Raisonne: Mourlot 1126, Cramer 241; Framed floated using two acid free mats, a black wood frame, and UV conservation clear glass.

“For me, lithography is not a means of reproduction but a means of expression.” - Joan Miró

Album 21 - Plate 1, 1978 by Joan Miró is a striking example of the artist’s mastery of lithography during a period when he was pushing the boundaries of printmaking into new realms of spontaneity, texture, and symbolic abstraction. Created in the late 1960s—a decade in which Miró increasingly embraced graphic media—the work reflects his ongoing fascination with the tension between control and freedom, gesture and structure. In this print, Miró deploys a vocabulary of familiar signs: looping calligraphic strokes, dynamic splashes of color, and ambiguous biomorphic forms that seem to hover between figure and landscape. The composition resonates with the artist’s lifelong interest in the subconscious and the poetic irrationality of Surrealism, yet it also reveals the mature clarity of his late style, where imagery becomes distilled, immediate, and almost musical.

Miró’s approach to this lithograph is inseparable from his artistic identity and evolution. Born in Barcelona in 1893, Miró was deeply influenced by Catalan folk art, Romanesque frescoes, and the inventive spirit of the early 20th-century avant-garde. His move to Paris in the 1920s brought him into close contact with poets and thinkers associated with Surrealism, a relationship that profoundly shaped his visual language. Rather than relying on realism or narrative, Miró sought to create a personal universe of signs—stars, eyes, celestial bodies, and playful biomorphic shapes—through which he could explore the subconscious, dreams, and the rhythms of nature. His artistic philosophy emphasized spontaneity, poetic suggestion, and the importance of maintaining a childlike sense of wonder. By the time he produced Album 21, Miró was a widely celebrated figure whose work had evolved into a minimal yet expressive vocabulary of marks, each charged with symbolic resonance.

The chromatic interplay of Album 21 Plate 1 is central to its expressive character. Miró uses bold, saturated hues—commonly red, yellow, blue, and black—to create a sense of movement, rhythm, and emotional contrast. Each color functions as both symbol and sensation, often floating freely within the composition as if suspended in an otherworldly space. The balance of crispness and spontaneity is heightened by the lithographic process, which allowed Miró to play with overlays, textures, and the momentary gestures that define his visual language. The result is a composition that feels both playful and deeply intentional, as though each element has been placed in conversation with the others in a kind of energetic cosmic dance.

The abstract signs and seemingly whimsical forms in this lithograph also reflect Miró’s broader search for a universal visual language. Throughout his career, he sought to strip imagery down to essential marks—stars, eyes, orbs, ladders, and calligraphic lines—that could function almost like ideograms. In Album 21 Plate 1, these symbols are not explicitly defined but evoke a sense of dreamlike narrative or hidden internal logic. The print invites viewers to interpret relationships between shapes, to trace the movement of the eye across the surface, and to sense the invisible forces that animate Miró’s world. This open-ended quality is central to Miró’s philosophy of art as a form of poetic expression rather than literal representation.

Finally, Album 21 Plate 1 demonstrates Miró’s belief in the print as an autonomous artistic medium rather than a secondary form of reproduction. By the 1960s, he had become a vigorous experimenter in etching, aquatint, and lithography, often working closely with master printers to achieve effects not possible in painting alone. His prints from this era are celebrated for their inventiveness, textural richness, and sense of immediacy—qualities that reflect his ongoing desire to keep his art fresh, spontaneous, and connected to his emotional impulses. In this lithograph, that spirit is palpable: the gestures feel unburdened, the symbols vibrate with mystery, and the overall composition conveys the boundless imaginative freedom that lies at the heart of Joan Miró’s enduring legacy.

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