Under the Influence of Classics: 1960-1982 - page 2

With regard to publishers, Miro's relationship with all those who he had known over the years became even closer. Pierre Matisse, Maeght, PAB, GLM, Gerald Cramer and many others continue publishing his works. They were joined by publishers from Barcelona who, despite official silence, respected and admired Miro's work: Sala Gaspar, Gustau Gili, La Poligrafa, and later on Maeght-Barcelona. Some editions were published too in Palm: El vol de l'alosa in 1973 by the Majorca Daily Bulletin, and Serie Mallorca, by the Sala Palaires in 1974.

As far as authors were concerned, during the last two decades of his life, Miro preferred to collaborate with friends but he also branched out into illustrating classic authors, thus revealing a dual facet for the first time.

He collaborated with friends of his own generation such as Michel Leiris (Fissures 1969), Rene Char (Flux de l'aiment, 1964), Robert Desnos (Les Penalites de L'Enfer ou Les Nouvelles-Hebrides, 1974) and J.V. Foix (Quatre colors aparien el mon, 1975). And he also worked with poets and writers younger than himself or whom he had recently met such as Joan Brossa (Cop de Poma, 1962), Maryse Lafont (Obscur laurieer, 1962), Pablo Neruda (El sobreviviente visita los pajaros, 1972), Jacques Dupin (L'issue derobee, 1974) and Carlos Franqui (Album 21, 1978).

Miro then took up the new challenge of working with the text of classics authors. In an entirely different spirit from that with which years earlier he had done the lithographs for Jarry's Ubu Roi, in 1973 he began on the plates to illustrate Le Cortisan grotesque by Adrian Monluc, which was published by Iliazd the following year. The fifteen etchings and Aquatints Le Cortisan grotesque show a Miro who was mature as regards technique, able to produce a wide range of textures and tones, but youthful in his carefree, confidant draftsmanship.

In 1974, too, he illustrated Lettre dite du voyant by Arthur Rimbaud, a writer considered by Surrealist as one of their own predecessors. For this book, Miro produced a lithograph in which, like much of his work at that time, black played a predominant role that dictated both composition and the arrangement of the other colors.

In 1975, Gustau Gili in Barcelona published Cantic del sol, a collection of writings by St Francis of Assisi selected in introduced by the poet Maria Manent and illustrated with thirty three etchings and aquatints by Miro. On this occasion the texts referred to concepts that were identical to some of Miro's themes: the moon, the sun, the stars, etc. These elements constitute a number of compositions on there own, whilst in others they spring from a gesture, a line, a response to more intangible concepts such as wind and rain