We are delighted to share a pair of proof impressions of Serie I from plates made by Joan Miró at Atelier 17 in New York in 1947. Miró had come to the United States for work on a commission for the Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio. He had been working at Atelier 17 on and off since the early 1930s and visited Stanley William Hayter in New York in June, 1947.
“One of the artists who exploited the effects of open bite etching most successfully was Joan Miró. Previously Miró had limited his prints to fairly conventional etchings and drypoints.” However, in New York in 1947, “the variety and unorthodoxy of the devices Miró employed…testify not only to the imaginative powers of an individual artist, but also to the uninhibited attitude toward experimentation that prevailed at Atelier 17 during the 1940s."
*Thanks to Joann Moser, Atelier 17: A 50th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition, (Madison, WI, Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1977)
The plate for Miró's Serie I (Dupin 75-82) was printed and published by Maeght in Paris in 1952. However, our impressions were pulled when Miró made the plate in New York. They are a superb demonstration of Miró exploring the possibilities of an etched plate: one impression is printed in relief, with the ink rolled onto the surface where with the other impression he has inked and wiped the surface of the plate clean to push the figures forward, haloed by the deep-etched outline. They are a handsome pair and both are annotated, “pour Hayter New York 17/6/1947”. The relief impression is also annotated on the back, “Femme Enfants Etoilé,” while the intaglio impression is annotated, “Jeux d’Enfant”.
We are fortunate that this pair remained together in Hayter’s own collection and we could not be more pleased to offer them 70 years on.
